


Home Range

by aeli_kindara



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cowboy AU, Cowboy Dean, Eventual Oil Rigs, Family Angst, Fossils, Geologist Cas, M/M, Rodeos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-04-08 05:48:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 55,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14098599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeli_kindara/pseuds/aeli_kindara
Summary: Castiel is a geology student at the University of Calgary, training for his future with the family oil company. When his father sends him to pursue a drilling contract at Ellen Harvelle’s ranch, he encounters Dean Winchester, a cowboy with a difficult past and an ascendant rodeo career.





	1. The Walking L

**Author's Note:**

> **home range** (n., zoology): ‘that area traversed by the individual in its normal activities of food gathering, mating and caring for young’ (Burt, 1943*); an animal’s demesne.
> 
> This fic was born of my time living in Alberta and Montana and working with ranchers on ecological conservation, as well as of a fondness for Dean’s cowboy enthusiasm and a perhaps unhealthy willingness to indulge certain comments made by certain actors at conventions. (Trust me, though. I’ll make it sad.)
> 
> Ranch life in North America is culturally rich, with a strong sense of community and many long-held traditions — as it no doubt is on other continents as well. While my time in ranching communities has made a big impact on me, it’s also been ephemeral at best; I hope to do it justice, and welcome any feedback from those who know better than I. My references include, among others, the [Ranch Diaries](https://www.hcn.org/voices/ranchdiaries) series by Laura Jean Schneider, articles from [Canadian Cattlemen](https://www.canadiancattlemen.ca/) and [Western Horseman](https://www.westernhorseman.com/) magazines, and the songwriting of [Corb Lund](https://www.corblund.com/).
> 
> Thanks for reading — I hope you enjoy!
> 
> *For my nerds out there: William Burt proposed the ‘home range’ concept in distinction to the ‘territory,’ which is an area actively defended by an animal or group of animals against incursions by others of the same species. All animals have a home range; not all are territorial. The size of a home range varies by species, of course, but also by how marginal of an existence an animal leads — the poorer your resources, the farther you must travel to meet your needs.

_May 14, 2006. West of Claresholm, Alberta._

 

The thing about ranches, Castiel discovers, is that there’s no way to tell where to park.

_Just go up to the house,_ his father told him, _be there a few hours early, see if you can do anything to help out, do I have to tell you how to do_ everything? _This is how business is done. I’m counting on you as my representative here._

_This is a_ family _ranch,_ he said also, weight on the word that encapsulated all of Castiel’s failings. _This rodeo is their — big to-do. Local pride and all that. These people respect willing hands and hard work. See if you can manage that for once._  

Of course, he’s already fucking it up. Where the driveway drops down through the gate and onto the flat by the river, it branches, into a wide, muddy lot fringed by weather-beaten buildings and steel-gated pens. Cas brakes his Nissan, self-conscious about its glossy exterior — he’s leased it for nearly a year now, but he doesn’t get out of the city much. For all that he argued his father down from a luxury sedan, it still feels ostentatious next to the ranch’s assortment of dusty pickups. Coming to a stop, he scans the yard.

It’s organized chaos: haphazardly parked trailers, bales of barbed wire, machinery Cas couldn’t begin to identify, farm dogs with wagging tails, a chicken. There’s an honest-to-god cowboy sitting a horse with a lasso at his hip, shouting instructions to two others as they wrestle to stabilize a trailer in the mud. Castiel knows he’s looking for Ellen Harvelle, the ranch owner — but he doesn’t see a woman anywhere, and no one pays him any mind.

The building to his left is differentiated from those surrounding it by the curtains in its glass windows — a house, probably, Castiel thinks. Parked in front of it are a truck and two horses, both tied to the wooden railing. There’s sort of a parking space to the right of the horses, but — Castiel hesitates. Running into Ellen Harvelle’s horses doesn’t seem like a great opening note for a business partnership.

He allows himself one further moment of indecision before shifting the car into park. He’s over on the side of the yard, at least, hopefully out of anyone’s way. He makes a wide berth around the horses as he picks his way to the house’s front steps.

He hesitates briefly, then ascends, peering surreptitiously past the curtain. Inside is a dingy-looking kitchen. He swallows, steeling himself to knock.

“Who you lookin’ for?” says a voice to his right.

Castiel stops dead, turning. Two men are standing there, arms hooked on the rail of a pen where more horses shift and stomp. They both look something like Cas’s age — late twenties, probably — but that’s where the resemblance ends. The two men — cowboys, they’ve got to be cowboys — are in boots and jeans and wide-brimmed hats pulled so low it’s hard to make out their faces.

The one who spoke has a cigarette in one hand. He’s thin, wiry, with a dark, straggling fringe of beard on his chin and an insolence in the way he slouches back against the gate. The other one —

Castiel swallows.

The other one has his back to Cas, elbows propped on the rail. He’s standing where he can see the horses, but his head is turned just enough to get a look at Cas, just enough for Cas to glimpse his profile. It’s shadowed under the brim of his hat, but that doesn’t stop Cas from noticing the line of his jaw, his full lips, the gleam of stubble —

_Stop it,_ Castiel tells himself firmly, and resolutely does not look at the cowboy’s ass.

“Hello,” he says. “Um. I’m looking for — Ms. Harvelle?”

“Big house,” says the cowboy with the cigarette, jerking his head. “This here’s just the bunkhouse.”

Castiel sees, when he turns, that there is indeed a much larger two-story house half-hidden in the poplars behind a barn. “Oh,” he says. “I — thank you.”

He pauses, idiotically, but neither cowboy speaks. The second one turns his gaze back to the horses. Castiel retreats.

It’s a long walk across the yard to the big house, and Castiel spends the entirety of it with his skin prickling with embarrassment. He considers and rejects the idea of repositioning his car — _whatever choice you make, be confident in it,_ his father would say, which of course is great advice when you haven’t already put your foot in your mouth by thinking a ranch owner lives in her damn bunkhouse. Instead, he picks his way between large puddles and wonders the whole time if the cowboys are watching him, if they’re laughing quietly to each other about what an obvious city slicker he is, or maybe worse, if they’ve already dismissed him entirely.

The big house has a wide front porch, and the steps creak under Castiel’s feet as he ascends them. He approaches the door with his fist raised to knock — and stops.

The main door to the house is wide open, letting warm May air in through the screen. From inside, he can hear arguing.

“Ellen,” a gruff male voice is saying, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me Novak was sending some flunkie —”

“It’s not a flunkie, it’s his son,” the woman interrupts sharply, “and I expect you to be civil to him.”

“What, be civil to the vultures circling this place? Oilmen on his land was the last thing Bill woulda wanted, you _know_ that, El!”

Castiel freezes, horrified. They’re talking about him. He should do something, announce his presence, or get out of this situation somehow, but — his mind works furiously but produces nothing, too terrified to either advance or retreat.

The woman’s voice is low and dangerous. “The last thing Bill wanted,” she says, “was to lose this place. And you know as well as I do, Bobby, that we are _really fucking close_ to that if we don’t find some way to get in the black. So, yeah, if I have to swallow a couple pumpjacks and suck up to some bigwig’s kid to save the ranch, you bet your ass I —”

Behind Castiel, someone clears his throat loudly.

He jumps, and bangs his knee against the screen door. It rattles on its hinges, and the voices from inside abruptly stop.

The cowboy from earlier — the second one, the beautiful one — is standing at the foot of the steps. His hat’s tipped far enough back that Castiel, for the first time, can see his eyes. There’s an ironic look to them, a bit of humor tugging at the corner of his lips. He shrugs, and turns to go just as the screen door swings open, forcing Castiel to stumble back a step, apology caught in his throat.

The woman in the doorway has straight brown hair with streaks of gray and a hard, determined mouth. In spite of that, there’s a startling kindness in her eyes.

“You must be Castiel,” she says, looking him over. “I’m sorry I wasn’t out to meet you; your father didn’t say you’d be arriving early.”

Castiel desperately wills calm into his voice. “My — I thought I would see if I could do anything to help set up. For the rodeo.”

Ellen Harvelle cocks her head at him. “You know, I think Bobby and the boys have got it well under control. Why don’t you —” she pauses, studying him. “Hey, Dean!”

That last comes out as a loud bark, and Castiel almost jumps again. But Ellen’s looking past him, out to where the second cowboy’s paused in the yard, scratching behind a dog’s ears. He stills, and takes a long moment to rise, then approaches again at an unhurried pace. _Bow legs,_ Castiel thinks faintly.

“Ma’am?” the cowboy — Dean — asks quietly, stopping a few paces shy of the porch.

“This is Castiel Novak,” says Ellen, jerking her head toward Cas. “He’s here for the rodeo later. I’d like you to show him around the ranch. And for God’s sake, I’m not your damn grandmother, call me by my name.”

Incredulity flits across Dean’s face, followed by anger, but his expression smooths over almost instantly. “Yes, ma’am.”

Ellen huffs annoyance, but the corners of her eyes crinkle with something that looks like affection. “All right, I got things to do. Get.”

Dean hesitates. “I could —”

“I told you what I want you doing, Dean. Are we clear?”

Cas sees Dean’s spine stiffen. “Yes, ma’am,” he says again.

“Good,” says Ellen, and turns away without another word, letting the door bang shut behind her.

Silence settles on the porch like a heavy blanket. Castiel stares at Dean. Dean stares at something past the corner of the house.

“I —” Castiel starts, with no idea what he’s about to say.

“All right,” Dean interrupts, “come on, then,” and when he starts across the yard again, Castiel has no choice but to follow.

\---

“You ever ride a horse?” asks Dean.

Castiel considers this question. He took two horseback-riding lessons as a child before his father discovered the rest of his class was all girls and pulled him out in favor of more masculine pursuits. “It would be best,” he says, “to assume I haven’t.”

Dean — who hasn’t looked at him, not really, since he first caught Castiel eavesdropping — stops in his tracks, and turns to stare. Castiel endures his scrutiny, keeping his face as blank as he can.

Finally, Dean shakes his head and turns away again. “Anyone ever tell you you’ve got a weird way of putting things?”

They have. Castiel says, “Yes.”

Dean lets out a snort of laughter but doesn’t elaborate, just leads the way past one of the barns and around the back. “Are we — going to be riding horses?” Castiel asks, uncertainly.

When Dean turns this time, it’s to give Castiel a grin with teeth in it, sharp and contemptuous and so dazzlingly arrogant it takes Cas’s breath away. “Me? Couple hours, and I’ll be riding some of the rankest — _horses_ — you’ll ever see a man on the back of. _We_ are taking this.”

He slaps his hand on the roof of a — well, it looks like a glorified golf cart, with deep-treaded tires and a cargo box in the back. There’s room for two to sit in the front, and Dean makes an _after-you_ gesture, inclining his head with just the barest hint of mockery.

Castiel hesitates. _Don’t let anyone treat you like anything less than a man,_ says his father’s voice in his head.

He’s still considering whether to pay it any mind, and if so, what he can even do about it, when a warm, furry mass twines past his knees, and the brown-and-white dog Dean was petting earlier leaps neatly into the vehicle’s passenger seat.

The tension of the moment dissipates, and Dean straightens, dropping his arm and rolling his eyes. A muscle works in his jaw as he does it, catching Castiel’s eye. “Not your seat,” Dean tells the dog. “Get.”

Apparently she knows this command, because she promptly leaps over the back of the seat and into the cargo box, circles once, and sits, looking expectantly at Dean.

“Oh, all right,” he mutters, and slides in behind the wheel. He turns to Cas where he’s still standing, and raises his eyebrows. “Coming?”

“I — yes,” says Cas, and slides into his own seat.

Dean makes a small derisive noise when Cas reaches to buckle his seatbelt — he hasn’t touched his own — but says nothing, just turns the key to start the engine and cranks the wheel hard left to turn them onto the two-track road.

The dog is panting in his ear. Castiel turns to run his fingers through the silky hair on her head, and she leans into his touch. “What’s her name?”

If Dean glances at him, Cas doesn’t see it. “Floss.”

Castiel searches for conversation. “Is she yours?”

“She’s the ranch’s,” says Dean, and swerves abruptly. Castiel lets out an involuntary exclamation as the vehicle thuds over a large boulder, tipping dangerously, and rights itself again, engine straining. They’re ascending the riverside bluff, up out of the poplars and onto the grassy plain above, and his seat wrenches alarmingly again, Dean’s hand’s fast on the steering wheel, but Castiel doesn’t notice, because —

The prairie stretches out before them, rolling and waving and stained with light. The grass is just turning from gold to green, and the shadows of sailing cumuli brush the far hills in blue. He can see a herd of black and russet cattle half-tucked into the next draw. The grass between them is studded with wildflowers, pink and white and yellow, and each of them seems to have taken a slice of sunlight to hold as its own.

Craning his head around, Castiel can see the river past the poplars and cottonwoods, coiling its way through the valley like a wide, well fed snake; its water is a lurid, glacial blue. It’s full, Castiel knows, of pulverized rock dust that the mountains’ icefields churn into it like a pepper grinder. That’s what scatters the light just so, even here, many miles downstream.

“It’s — beautiful,” he says, and hears his heart catch in the words.

This time, Dean does look at him. “Dude,” he says, “it’s the same road you came in on.”

Castiel looks around. Dean’s right — their precipitous ascent up the bluff has deposited them back on the wide gravel road that makes its more deliberate way down to the ranch. “I — didn’t appreciate it as much then,” he says stiffly.

He expects another needle of derision. But Dean just laughs and shakes his head, like he doesn’t know quite what to make of Cas. There’s a smile tugging at his mouth as he turns off onto another two-track and speeds them northward, toward the cloud-painted hills.

\---

“So that’s Walking L out to the road. Eighteen sections,” says Dean. They’re standing on top of a small ridge, a short walk from where Dean parked; Floss leaped from the vehicle almost before it stopped to go exploring. “On the other side of the river, we go all the way up into the foothills — see that line of rock, there?”

Castiel squints in the direction he’s pointing. He can see a sharply rising cliff face, hazy in the distance, sudden behind the pine-dappled foothills. There’s snow on its peak. The mountain front in Alberta is like that — abrupt and stupefying in its grandeur. Cas has gotten fond of it, in his time here. “The McConnell Thrust,” he says.

Dean stops short of whatever he was about to say, turning to look at Cas. “The — what now?”

“McConnell Thrust,” Cas repeats, feeling self-conscious. “It’s — the rocks that make up that cliff were thrust up over the rocks underneath during the plate collisions that built these mountains. They were displaced over forty kilometers, I believe. Kilometres,” he repeats, belatedly remembering to use the Canadian pronunciation — emphasis on the first and third syllables, not the second.

Dean laughs. “It’s okay,” he says, “we’re all dumb Americans here.”

Castiel cocks his head, looking at him. “You didn’t grow up here?”

Dean looks suddenly embarrassed. “Nah,” he says, eyes dropping to his feet. “Why?”

The question comes out combative, but when he surveys Dean, Castiel doesn’t think it’s out of scorn; Dean’s shoulders are hunched, posture defensive, and he won’t meet Castiel’s eye. “You seem proud of it,” he says simply.

“Yeah, well.” Dean shoves his hands in his pockets and looks out toward the mountains again. “That — thrust or whatever, it’s where the ranch ends. I mean, it’s in pieces out there, obviously, and plenty of it’s on lease, but Harvelle cattle range all the way up to the mountains, in summertime.”

It doesn’t sound like a bad life for a cow. “So that’s — most of the ranch,” Castiel says, mentally tallying. “How do you get over there? Across the river, I mean.”

Dean nods southward. “Go around to the bridge, this time of year,” he says. “Sometimes in summer the water gets low enough to ford.” He glances up at Castiel quickly, eyes darting away again. “That’s — the real heart of the Walking L. Across the river, I mean. Though I guess you’re more interested in the eastern sections, huh?”

Castiel blinks. “Why would I be?”

Dean waves a hand at him. “Geologists. More oil where the rock hasn’t been smushed as much, right?”

Castiel had almost forgotten why he’s here. “Yes, that’s right.” When Dean doesn’t answer, he adds, shyly, “I still — I’d love to see the rest.”

His words seem to catch Dean’s attention in a way he didn’t entirely intend. Dean turns to look him full in the face, eyes searching, and Castiel realizes, with a swoop in his gut, that they’re green. They’re also _close,_ closer than Castiel can reasonably ignore, and he feels his breath hitch involuntarily and his cheeks flush, sees Dean’s mouth soften just a little as he does, flash of recognition in those green eyes, eyes that are focused now, intent on Castiel's own mouth —

Castiel steps back, stumbling on a rock.

If his behavior discomfits Dean, he doesn’t show it. He just glances back to the west, adjusting his hat. “Yeah, well. No time today. I gotta get back.”

Castiel nods dumbly, still feeling wrong-footed. He finds his voice and says, “Of course. I wouldn’t dream of keeping you.”

Dean doesn’t answer, just puts his fingers in his mouth and whistles for Floss, who comes bounding. He doesn’t speak the entire ride back to the ranch, either, but there’s a tiny pleased curve that lingers at his mouth whenever Castiel dares a glance at him, and he can’t quite shake the feeling of Dean’s gaze on him when he looks away.

\---

The thing is — Castiel’s never done this.

He’s gone to a gay bar twice. The first time, he let a man put his hands on his hips and pull him in and kiss him, then ran for the bathroom and spent twenty minutes sweating on the floor of a locked stall, not sick enough to vomit but still too sick to leave. The second time, he spent the night talking a pair of lesbian ex-girlfriends through their issues. They left happily intertwined, and Castiel left with a sense of wholesome well-being that nonetheless did little to convince him that gay bars were a promising avenue for his own future happiness.

Aside from that, he’s — well, he’s been with a couple of women, even lost his virginity to his high school girlfriend April, of whom his parents heartily approved up until the two horrible months when she pretended to be pregnant in order to extort the Novaks’ money. Cas thought this had probably been her own mother’s idea — in retrospect, the community he grew up in was kind of fucked up — but the situation at least gave his parents some pause about hounding him to find a nice girl and settle down.

Still, he went out with a few other women in college, until finally his friend Charlie sat him down to tell him in no uncertain terms that he was gay, and should stop trying to pretend otherwise. She laid out a thoroughly researched case complete with photos of all his secret — he’d thought — crushes, and Castiel had his first panic attack and rode in an ambulance with an annoyed EMT, and Charlie apologized about fifty times and somehow made the insurance paperwork go away so his parents would never see the bill and ask.

Since then, Castiel’s sort of come to terms with it — though it took a long time for Charlie to convince him that his history with women didn’t at least make him bi — and come out to exactly no one. He’s learned enough about porn to get himself off on a regular basis, and Charlie’s gentle coaxing to put himself out there has died down to an occasional, half-hearted “You know —” before Castiel cuts her off again.

It’s honestly been easy. There have been guys Cas has looked at, sure, but none of them have ever looked back, and he’s pretty sure that casual hookups are not his thing. If he expected to ever find someone to do more than look at, well, he’d have figured it would be in cosmopolitan Calgary — not at a backwater ranch an hour’s drive from the nearest rainbow flag.

He can’t tell whether he finds it more exciting or terrifying.

He also can’t tell if he’s imagining it. Every thirty seconds or so, he convinces himself that he is, he must be; then he dares a glance at Dean and finds him already looking, eyes lingering on Cas’s shoulders, his hips. _Keep your eyes on the fucking road,_ Cas wants to say, only doing that would require acknowledging — this — and as weird as that is, there’s also a part of him that doesn’t want to put a stop to Dean’s appraisal. He’s suddenly weirdly aware of how his shirt falls across his chest, of how the wind has mussed his hair, of his hands, idle and awkward in his lap. He smooths them across his thighs, and thinks Dean tracks the movement.

_You’re making things up,_ Castiel tells himself severely. _This random cowboy who probably hates you is definitely not gay, and even if he were, he wouldn’t be interested in you. Leave it._

_Also,_ says another part of his brain, _there are very few worse times and places to pursue your first ever — real gay thing — than while representing your homophobic father’s new business venture. Snap out of it, Cas._

The silence has grown so thick — even Floss decides to give them personal space, leaping from the bed when Dean slows to cross the cattle guard into the main yard — that Cas seizes on the first question he can think of to break it. “What’s it mean, anyway? The Walking L?”

Dean gives him an odd look, and the tension holds, then breaks. “It’s our brand,” he says, pointing at the wooden sign that swings over the ranch gate.

Cas noticed the symbol earlier, but didn’t put it together. It’s simply a letter L with two crude serifs, like little feet. It looks as if it was burned into the wood with a hot iron.

“It’s on all the cattle,” Dean explains, already moving away and picking up a heavy saddle and blanket from where they’re propped over a wooden rail. “Lets everyone know they’re ours. There’s a whole legal system around cattle brands — ask Ellen if you want to know more.” He ascends the steps of the bunkhouse, and hesitates. “Listen, I — gotta get ready to ride. You need me to take you back over to the big house, or —?”

Castiel’s manners kick in belatedly. “I should be fine, thank you,” he says, extending a hand to shake Dean’s. “And thank you for showing me around.”

Dean has to shift the burden in his arms to shake Castiel’s hand, but he does. His palm is warm and callused, and his grip lingers, for just a moment. Just long enough to give Castiel a sense of loss when it goes, just long enough to make him ask, foundering, “Will you — what event will you be in?”

Dean pauses before answering, one hand on the doorknob. “Bareback,” he says finally. “And bull.” All of a sudden, he smiles broadly, and gives Castiel a wink. “But bareback’s the one I’ll win.”

Castiel chokes on his surprised laugh. “I’ll hold you to that.”

“Give a shout when you see blue chaps,” says Dean, grinning even wider, “and I’ll see what I can do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today in Canadian country songs as source material: Corb Lund, [S Lazy H](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYVpRBuBOlA).


	2. Kick a Hole in the Sky

Dean is as good as his word.

Castiel isn’t.

The rodeo arena’s half a mile from the house, up on the bench above the river, where there’s plenty of parking on the grass. It’s got a few banks of bleachers and a high wooden announcer’s box that overlooks everything, flanked by a dense labyrinth of steel pens and chutes. People are starting to trickle over to the grassy bank on the far side of the arena — families toting picnic baskets and coolers of beer. They lay out blankets and set up lawn chairs, settling in for the show.

Ellen has him sit with her up in the announcer’s box, and somehow keeps up a seamless patter of pleasant conversation around a series of barked orders to Bobby — Singer, the ranch manager, Castiel learns — and the rest of her crew. Her daughter Jo says hello briefly and disappears again, getting ready to compete in the barrel racing, and Ellen tells Castiel about Jo’s father, her late husband; about how he used to be a great saddle bronc rider, and started this event when he retired; that ever since his death — _will someone get Abe Dansby out of the ring, Jesus, thank you Mike —_ they’ve put it on in his honor: the Bill Harvelle Memorial Rodeo.

The seats continue to fill as she’s talking, and then they’re joined by the announcer himself, Clayton Gebbers: an enormous man with an enormous hat over slicked-back gray hair, who crushes Castiel’s hand in his and grins at him with tobacco-stained teeth.

“Ellen,” he says next, and for a moment she looks tiny in his bear hug of an embrace. “How’s Joanna?”

“She’s doing well,” Ellen croaks when he releases her, slightly pink in the face. “And how are you, Clayton?”

“Never better!” the man booms, and then, lowering his voice conspiratorially, “I’ll tell you, don’t go spreading it around or people’ll think I’ve gone soft, but Annie and the kids finally got me to Hawaii this winter, and the _beaches_ —”

Castiel tunes him out, glancing around. The cowboys have started to gather in the walkways around the chutes, talking and checking their gear, but from this angle, it’s impossible to identify them under their hats. Blue chaps, Dean said, but Cas can’t really make out their legs past the railings; he spends a good minute scanning for that bow-legged walk before giving it up as futile.

At four o’clock on the dot, Clayton flashes the two of them one last yellowed grin, and the music that’s been playing over the speakers fades out. He lowers his chin and rumbles into the microphone in a voice that carries across the arena, “Ladies and gentlemen. Good evening, and _welcome..._ to the _twenty third_ annual Bill — Harvelle — Memorial — Rodeoooo!”

A cheer rises from the crowd. Castiel settles back in his seat as Clayton continues, “We got a great show ahead of us tonight, folks. Five different CFR champions right here in the house, and they’ll be up against some of the best stock this side of the Medicine Line. And let’s not forget to give it up for the greatest hostess anywhere, Ellen Harvelle!”

The crowd applauds dutifully, and Ellen rolls her eyes but stands to wave, leaving Castiel feeling awkward and exposed as the eyes turn up to their box. He twists his hands in his lap and scans the crowd to see Dean down in the chutes, face upturned as he tips his hat, grinning. Cas’s heart jolts uncomfortably in his chest.

“Without further ado,” Clayton is saying, “let’s get rolling with the first event of the night — the bareback bronc riding! Now, for you newcomers, and I know we’ve got a few of you in the crowd, bareback bronc is one of our scored events this evening, where each cowboy who completes his eight-second ride will receive a score out of one hundred — fifty for the cowboy, and fifty for the horse. The rougher the ride, the higher the score — _if_ they can stay on!”

Beside him, Ellen sits, making a face. “Greatest hostess, my ass,” she says in an undertone. “Clayton knows I hate all these people looking at me; it’s exactly why he does it.”

Castiel doesn’t quite know how to respond to that, so he asks, “Are any of your employees besides Dean riding tonight?”

She shakes her head. “Asa screwed up his back a few years ago on a bull, and Bobby’s never gone in for that kind of thing, though he’d be a damn fine roper if he wanted to. It’s up to Dean and Jo to represent the ranch.” At Cas’s questioning look, she adds, “Most of the folks you’ve seen around today are just here to help out — takes a village and all that.”

_But not me,_ Castiel thinks, feeling even more useless than usual. _I get sent on a pleasure ride and take one of her three employees away from useful work._ For all that he enjoyed his excursion with Dean, it stings.

Clayton is busy introducing the first rider, who’s climbing onto his horse in the chutes below. “ _Very_ hot hand right now, Cody Traister, missed the top prize in last year’s CFR by only two points, and a lot of folks are saying he’s the man to beat this time around. We got a dream matchup here with this stallion, this is —” Castiel doesn’t quite catch the name — “earned a score of _ninety five_ under Davey Shields in last year’s Calgary Stampede, and folks, this could be a wild one!”

Castiel peers down, trying to see what the cowboy — Cody Traister — is doing. He’s not sure what he expected, but it wasn’t to see a man practically lying flat on his back on the horse, heels digging into its shoulders. He’s wearing a massive leather glove on his right hand, and looks like he’s practically pounding it into a leather rigging strapped at the horse’s withers, making sure the hold is tight. Then he shouts something, and raises his other hand in the air, and the gate of the chute flies open.

The horse explodes out of it. He lands squarely on his front legs, kicking the rear ones high in the air, and a cloud of dust goes with them as the cowboy flops like a rag doll; then the horse twists, kicking again. Castiel’s gasp is swallowed in the noise of the crowd as Cody Traister slips sideways, still clinging to his single hold but clearly flailing for control. One more buck, and he’s gone, tumbling into the dust, and Castiel sucks in an alarmed breath as the horse’s legs fling out again, but the cowboy rolls low and is up and running, clutching his hat to the head, as a buzzer blares over the arena.

“And that’s why this horse is the best of the best!” shouts Clayton, clearly delighted, as the pair of mounted cowboys in the arena below flank the still-bucking stallion and guide it toward the exit. “Better luck next time, Cody! Next up, we have —”

“Do people ever get trampled?” Castiel asks Ellen, too alarmed to regulate the shock out of his voice.

She glances over at him, and whatever she sees makes her smile. “Not often,” she says. “Every once in a while someone might catch a kick when they’re unlucky, but these boys know how to fall. And the horses won’t go after a rider — bulls will, that’s why we have the bullfighters in to distract them, but the horses just want to buck.”

Several different questions present themselves in Castiel’s mind, but he chokes them down, twisting his fingers nervously in the hem of his shirt. The next rider isn’t Dean, either. He does keep his seat for the full eight seconds, but he still looks like little more than a scrap of cloth being tossed around, chaps flapping like malformed wings. His hat goes flying off his head, and Cas is sure the cowboy’s one buck short of following it, but then the horn sounds and he drops his left hand, the one he’s been scything in the air for balance, and grabs the rigging with both hands.

The mare’s still wild, still bucking a little as she races a circle around the arena, but Cas gets the sense it’s mostly for the joy of it — almost, that she’s showing off for the crowd. The two other horsemen in the arena move to flank her as they did the first horse, and the rider falls sideways to wrap his arms around the other man’s waist. As his own mount gallops on, he lets go, dropping neatly to the dirt. He grins out at the crowd, waving, and jogs to retrieve his hat.

“And that’ll be an eighty-two point five for Dustin Brodie of Grande Prairie,” Clayton announces, “which puts him first on our leaderboard — we’ll see how long that can last!”

It doesn’t last long. The next rider puts up eighty-four, and two later, an eighty-six, but Castiel’s not really paying attention. Dean’s name still hasn’t been called, but he’s watching for blue chaps all the same, and with every jolt to a cowboy’s body, every undignified fall in the dirt, his gut twists still further. It’s stupid, he knows it is, Dean knows what he’s doing, but every beat of his heart feels like a question that wants to wrench its way out of his chest: _how can you do this to yourself, how, how?_

The day isn’t a hot one, still early spring by Alberta standards, but Castiel’s a sweaty mess by the time Clayton finally declaims: “Well, here we are for our last bareback ride of the night. Dean Winchester, ladies and gentlemen.”

Whoops and cheers punctuate the round of applause, but the crowd hushes as Clayton continues, voice dropping low. “Let’s set this up for you, folks. Let’s remind you what happened two years ago this weekend, in this arena, on this very horse — when young Dean here took the rodeo world by storm. Posted a ninety-one point five, won the night, and he didn’t stop winning. This young man out of Lawrence, Kansas — but he’s practically a native son by now, Ellen, wouldn’t you say? — hit the finals ranked second in nation. Out of nowhere and straight to the top, a Cinderella story if I ever heard one — but he never made it to the ball.”

Castiel glances at Ellen, whose lips are tight, face betraying nothing. Clayton continues, dramatically: “That’s right, folks. A family tragedy; a young superstar in the making who missed his chance to step onto the world stage. After missing those 2004 finals, he struggled all last season, and fell short of Edmonton. It’s a new year, though — a fresh start. And tonight, we’re here to ask you: can he recreate the magic? Launch that fairytale story once again? One man. One horse. And eight seconds — to show you what they’re made of.”

If he meant to time his speech, he’s done it perfectly. A deathly hush falls over the crowd as a passing cloud obscures the sun, casting a dark shadow over the arena, and then sails on. A beam of sunlight sparks bright on the gate of Dean’s chute.

It flies open.

_Blue chaps,_ Dean said, _give me a shout,_ but Castiel can’t, because his heart is in his throat, and Dean is poetry in motion.

The horse is a brown so dark it’s almost black. She comes out of the chute airborne, back arched, all four legs extended, but Dean is a part of her, silhouetted in dust that ignites gold in the sudden sun. The mare twists beneath him, and blue leather dances, but Dean’s legs surge in rhythm, as if they already know the steps. She touches down, and he melts against her; she bucks again, and his arm flies high, a sign to the heavens, Promethean: _I have taken your fire I am all that you are I am god I am god I am —_

Castiel chokes on his own blasphemy, but Ellen doesn’t hear his strangled sob; she’s just as transfixed as he is, and Dean’s still wheeling, still flying, and Castiel is suddenly aware of how every muscle in his body must be singing in perfect time, of how this is a dance of _power_ as well as of grace, that the mare beneath him is a rhapsody in flesh, pouring out her paean to wildness, to life, of how Dean is a worthy vessel —

— and then it’s over, and the buzzer sounds, and Dean jolts in his seat like a mortal man, stumbles hard as he slips from her back to the dirt. He catches himself with a mighty step, and just stands there for a moment, as if recollecting his humanity, before reaching up to lift his hat from his head.

Underneath it, he’s grinning. Clayton is saying, “And _that’s_ how you do it, folks, eighty-nine points and a winning ride for Dean Winchester!”, and Castiel is sort of shocked that it isn’t a perfect one hundred, but as Dean beams up at the box, up at them, up at _him,_ he feels as though it doesn’t matter anyway, because there couldn’t possibly be a more perfect moment in the world.

\---

He has time to come down from it.

As the heady intoxication of the moment fades, Castiel’s sense of his own ridiculousness returns. He’s on what amounts to a business trip for his father; he’s surrounded by strangers, one of whom is young and male and attractive and gave him one look that probably meant nothing; he’s in a conservative, rural part of — Canada, yes, not Texas, but — regardless of that. If Cas is halfway to deifying the first attractive man who’s ever shown him the barest hint of possible interest, that alone is probably sign enough of his unreliable judgment of the situation.

Maybe Charlie was right, and the sexual frustration’s finally caught up with him.

Castiel bites back a groan. He wishes he didn’t have to get through the rest of this day; wishes he could leave and take his fantasies of Dean back to somewhere private, somewhere he can have all the unholy thoughts he wants and no one to see them on his face, somewhere he can _do_ something about them. He’s practically fantasizing about fantasizing, which is sort of pathetic, when the floor of the announcer’s box creaks, and he turns, and there’s Dean.

They’re in the middle of an intermission — through with the team and tie-down roping and the saddle bronc, and gearing up for the barrel racing — and Clayton’s stepped out for a visit to the bathroom, leaving the announcer’s box to Ellen and Bobby, conversing intently about something to one side, and Castiel, sitting alone at the other. Dean glances between them as he enters. His chaps are a deep powder blue, with leather tassels and darker blue embroidery in western motifs, the walking L prominent among them. His hat is black and flecked with dust, and his face shines with sweat, and he looks so fucking good that Castiel sort of wants to curl up in a ball and drop right through the floor where he sits.

Dean’s eyes catch on his, and he has no idea what he can possibly say, _no idea,_ but then Ellen stretches a hand toward him in an almost maternal gesture and says, in a low voice that Castiel almost doesn’t catch, “Dean, I’m so sorry about Clayton. I had no idea he was going to pull something like that.”

Dean turns half toward her but pauses, and the muscles of his shoulders twitch, like a horse dislodging a fly. “It’s fine,” he says.

“Clayton’s a blowhard who doesn’t know the first thing about anything,” growls Bobby, “but he was outta line.”

“I said it’s fine,” Dean repeats. “Listen — Dale Newton was wondering if there’s a quiet place he could put that rope horse of his for a few hours, thinks she tweaked a muscle and doesn’t want her prancing on it with everything going on. I thought I could show him down to the old sheep yard if that’s okay.”

“Good idea,” says Ellen. “Thank you, Dean.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answers, grinning as she rolls her eyes.

She wastes no more time on the subject, turning immediately to resume her conversation with Bobby, and Dean turns almost to go before he hesitates, eyes catching on Cas again, and takes a swaggering half-step toward him.

“Well?” he asks, grin even wider than before. “What’d you think?”

It doesn’t occur to Castiel to be anything but honest. “You were spectacular,” he says, and feels his face color as he hears his own words.

To his surprise, Dean falters, stopping short of another step forward. The grin freezes on his face and fades, then makes a half-hearted attempt to return before he clears his throat and says, a little gruffly, “Thanks. I should —”

“Yes. Of course,” says Cas.

Dean turns and takes two quick strides into the doorway. But he pauses there again and says, half over his shoulder, “We’re going down the road to celebrate after. You should come.”

“All right,” says Castiel, and Dean is gone before he has any time to ponder the question of what, exactly, he just agreed to.

\---

The rest of the rodeo passes in a blur. Jo takes fifth in barrel racing, a result Ellen says is quite good for the new horse she’s been training, and Castiel gets his mind blown yet again by the fact that steer wrestling is, quite simply, a competition in which cowboys jump off of a moving horse and onto the horns of a moving steer. He’s not sure which of the various lunatic feats he’s seen performed today is the most incomprehensible, but that seems to rank high among them — and then it’s time for the bull riding.

Castiel’s heard of bull riding before; he’s seen it on TV. Growing up in Texas, it was hard to avoid, even if his family generally stuck to their pressed suits and glassy corporate skyscrapers. He’s never thought very hard about what getting on the back of a rodeo bull entails, never been in the same place as one, and once he looks down at the first broad, muscular back, he realizes that equating them with the broncs is a fundamental mistake.

The broncs all stood more or less quietly while their riders mounted them in the chute, waiting for the gate to start their performance. The bulls kick and quiver and slam against the walls, and several of the cowboys have to find their seat more than once before they signal that they’re ready to start their actual ride.

Each bull is simply _massive_ , a fat, squat tank of an animal shuddering with unimaginable power, and if they don’t buck as high as the broncos, they twist three times as hard, torquing their riders from their backs. Fewer riders make the eight seconds, and even those that do still get dumped in heaps on the dirt — at which point the bull turns on them, snorting and seeking, and it’s up to the bullfighters to keep them from getting gored.

Bullfighting isn’t quite what Castiel imagined, either. He’d thought of sharp sticks or prods, great burly men who are somehow capable of combating an angry, 2,000-pound animal. Instead, the bullfighters are wiry, quick and nimble, and completely unarmed. Their job seems to be to run straight _at_ the bull as the rider falls, placing themselves between them. Stunningly, it almost always works.

It doesn’t make him feel any better when it’s Dean’s turn to ride.

As Clayton thunders out something about “a rare double appearance from tonight’s bareback bronc champion, and boy was that a pretty ride,” Castiel leans toward Ellen and asks, “Why is he riding again? Isn’t he better at bareback?”

Ellen gives him a measuring look, and takes a moment to answer. “Yes,” she says, “but the ranch didn’t have anyone else to put on a bull this year, with Asa hurt. Dean wanted to represent us.”

“He’d risk his life to do that?”

Clayton’s already delivered a soliloquy on the subject — if bareback bronc is the most physically demanding of the disciplines, bull riding is the most dangerous. Still, Castiel’s question comes out sharper than he intended — more accusatory. There’s another question in it, one he didn’t mean to ask: _You’d let him?_

Ellen’s eyes linger on him for another moment, but she doesn’t answer. Then the gate below bangs open, and Dean’s in the ring.

It’s immediately obvious that this ride won’t go as well as his last one. The bull stumbles out of the chute, then lurches hard left, unseating Dean so he’s listing sideways. He keeps his arm in the air and hangs on for another buck, another, and then he’s slipping off the side but his hand is still caught in the rigging and Castiel lurches half to his feet as Dean dangles there, hung up, mere inches from the thundering hooves —

Then he slips free, and the bullfighters are there, one of them smacking the animal right on its horns as it turns for the cowboy crumpled in the dust. And Castiel’s heart is in his throat, but Dean lurches upright and runs for the barrier, leaping easily up to the second rung. He’s holding his right hand oddly, Castiel’s sure that he is, but he shows no sign of pain as two other cowboys help haul him over the rail. He claps one of them on the shoulder in thanks and turns away as Clayton says, “And that’s no score for Dean Winchester, which leaves us with just two more riders on the night —”

Castiel can’t keep up with this sport. He shakes his head against the emotional whiplash, and Ellen leans back again and says, quietly, “In our line of work, you stand up.”

Castiel stills. This is the message for his father.

“You heard me and Bobby talking. We may well need you,” Ellen continues. “But you need us, too. Novak Energy’s got no hold in the Alberta market, and these folks don’t do business with people they don’t know. That’s what tonight is about. That’s why you risk your life. To show your neighbors what kind of man — and what kind of woman — you are.”

Castiel swallows, taking in her words. He understands, suddenly: Dean’s bull ride wasn’t about winning. Nor was Jo’s race, or even his bronc ride, not really. It’s about the pride they have in this ranch, in their work, in this little slice of the world and the animals and people that call it home. It’s about showing everyone — showing _Cas_ — what kind of woman Ellen Harvelle is.

The kind that inspires loyalty.

“Some of these people have been screwed over by oil companies,” murmurs Ellen. “Lied to. Their lands polluted. Some of them have never touched the stuff, and swear they never will. Not many are in a position like mine.”

_I’m your best chance here,_ she’s saying. _I won’t be selling easy,_ she’s saying.

_If you screw me, not a one of the ranchers sitting in this stadium — or their neighbors, or their cousins, or their in-laws — will ever go near you again._

Suddenly, none of it feels like an accident. His overheard conversation with Bobby, his excursion with Dean, even — his pulse flutters — does she know, can she tell, how he —

His train of thought is derailed when Ellen lays a hand over his own. “That’s what you can tell your father, Castiel,” she says more warmly. “As for yourself — just remember that you’re welcome at the Walking L anytime.”

\---

“Down the road” is an old-school western dance hall, and it’s packed to the gills with cowboys and cowgirls and friends.

Jo takes it upon herself to guide him there, though not before Dean finds him in the chaos of the arena exits, claps a hand on his shoulder, thumb brushing Castiel’s hairline and doing strange things to his heart, and shouts, “You’re coming, right?” directly in Castiel’s ear.

He’s helpless to resist after that, but he does take his own car, turning down Jo’s offer of a ride in one of the ranch pickups that he privately thinks is as likely to die a catastrophic, final death as to make it the ten minutes to the bar. It doesn’t, and he follows her all the way there, pulling in beside her and falling in, before he knows it, with a loud, chattering group of cowboys, Dean among them. The last two fingers on his right hand are splinted, but if it’s hurting him, he shows no sign — he’s laughing as hard as the next guy as a third narrates his own ignominious fall. They smell of sweat and horses, and it’s nearly overpowering, but Castiel can’t find it in himself to mind.

At the bar, one of the cowboys he remembers vaguely from earlier — Dusty? Dustin? — slaps down one hand on the wood and shouts loudly, “You got any of them coconut drinks? ‘Cause I know a couple cowboys in need of ‘em —”

He breaks off, laughing, when Dean elbows him in the side. The bartender grins over the counter at him and says, “Double whiskey for the champion here, comin’ right up.”

“Make it top shelf,” Dean tells him, to whoops from the other cowboys. When it’s his turn, Castiel orders a beer for himself and lets the press of people carry him to a long wooden booth. By the time he’s settled himself, though, half of them have dispersed — most to the dance floor, where Jo and Cody Traister are now laughing as they struggle to keep up with an energetic fiddle tune, and a handful of others to the dart boards in a corner. Castiel finds himself across the table from Dean.

There’s a large, hairy-looking coconut on the table at his elbow, and a handful of Mounds bars beside it. Dean’s still grinning into his whiskey glass, looking something close to incandescent with happiness, and Castiel blurts, “Why are people giving you coconuts?”

Dean’s head jerks. He looks almost surprised to see Castiel there, mouth forming a tiny _o_ before he remembers to close it, then takes another sip of his whiskey. “The horse I won on. Her name’s Coconut Roll.”

Castiel blinks. “That’s… an odd name for a horse.”

Dean shrugs. “Maybe, but she’s the best bucking horse I’ve ever been on.” He nods to the dance floor. “She’s dam to Grated Coconut, that threw Cody in the first matchup.” His eyes look distant. “There’s a bronc I’d like the chance to ride.”

There’s a lump in Castiel’s throat. _What happened to you,_ he wants to say. _What family tragedy, what’s in Lawrence, Kansas, why are you practically a native son —_

_Why would you climb on a bull for Ellen Harvelle but look at your feet when someone suggests that her home might also be yours —_

_What happened to you — and is there any chance it’s like the thing that still might happen to me —_

“Dean!” says a voice, and the spell is broken, Castiel blinking into the chaos of the bar. “Poker, you in? Put those winnings to work!”

“Give ‘em up to you, you mean,” Dean drawls in answer, but he rises to follow, sparing Castiel a questioning look. “Wanna join?”

Castiel’s beer suddenly seems less appealing. “I — should get home, thank you. Good luck with —”

“When do you want that tour of the rest of the ranch?” Dean interrupts him, and Castiel can’t be imagining that strange look in his eye, the suddenly determined set of his jaw, the tension in the line of his shoulders.

They never talked about a tour of the rest of the ranch. Not really, though when Dean spoke of it with such open love —

Castiel swallows. “How about — next weekend?” he tries. He’s stepping into a trap, he must be, but it’s one he can’t yet see.

“I’m riding next weekend,” says Dean, curtly. “The one after? Two weeks from now?”

“Okay,” says Castiel slowly, still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Saturday, then,” says Dean. “If you can. Be here early.” And he turns to go without another look back.

Castiel stares at his beer. He has no idea what just happened. He should go. It’s a long drive back to Calgary.

He downs the rest of the bottle, shrugs on his jacket, and slips out into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coconut Roll and Grated Coconut are real horses! And very [majestic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ9BRXCs9rI) ones, too.
> 
> Chapter title from [The Rodeo’s Over](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=877eHLH4aS4), by Corb Lund & Ian Tyson.


	3. A Loop on Paradise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! For some reason, this chapter was like pulling teeth; thanks so much to Cass for her encouragement, feedback, and cheerleading, without which it might not exist. Thanks also to everyone who's read and commented — y'all are awesome. <3

Within twenty-four hours, the rodeo seems like a dream.

Castiel spends Sunday at home, tidying his condo, running some data analyses, and savoring his memories of Dean. He embellishes on them a little — well, a lot — in his morning shower, and despite the pleasant, exhausted hum under his skin, flashes of images linger with him all day. 

He calls his father on Monday morning to deliver his report. The one he gives is honest, if succinct: Ellen Harvelle is a valuable ally, and a shrewd one. Making her a favorable deal will pay off in the long run. Quality work will be paramount.

His father listens carefully and hangs up without further discussion, and Castiel heads down to his car. 

It still looks dirty from Saturday, and he smiles fondly at it for a moment, remembering the plume of dust that followed him down the Walking L’s driveway. Shaking his head, he opens the door, deposits his laptop bag in the passenger seat, and starts the ignition.

He’s spending the day at the Geological Survey of Canada’s core storage facility, selecting rock samples for the project he hopes will be the final chapter of his Ph.D. His goal is to compare paleoenvironments across a latitudinal gradient along the Canadian Rocky Mountain front, but selecting the right cores to analyze will be critical. They’ll all be made up of sediments from an ancient ocean, but he needs ones deposited in deep enough water to constitute a continuous record and shallow enough to reflect environmental variability; ideally, someone will have already worked on them, acquiring baseline data and benchmarking the record with dates.

Castiel pores over catalogues and pulls box after box of core, noting those with promise. He realizes that most people would find the work hopelessly tedious, but he loves it — he’s in a library of time and space, a four-dimensional map room, each sample an alien traveler from times when the earth was ruled by dinosaurs, by sea monsters, by ammonites the size of truck tires. And by smaller things, too: corals that no longer exist; sponges that built intricate skeletons out of crystals of glass.

Castiel is fortunate, he knows, that his father’s business interests have placed him in a field he loves. Granted, once he finishes and starts working full-time for the company, he’ll have less time to pursue knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but — still. It’s not a bad way to live.

The day disappears before he knows it, and he’s roused from his focus only by the woman who runs the place tapping his shoulder and telling him, with a patience born of familiarity, “Castiel. It’s time to go.”

Castiel thanks her and returns the last box to its place. He’ll have to return tomorrow; maybe the next day, too. He can’t say he objects to the possibility.

His phone rings as he’s merging onto the Crowchild Trail, joining the flow of cars returning downtown. He glances at it, and when he sees Charlie’s name, answers automatically, putting the call on speaker.

“Hey Cas,” she chirps. Then, a moment later: “Cas, are you driving?”

“Shit,” he says, wincing at his own absent-mindedness. Charlie’s parents were killed in a car accident that she long considered her fault; she has strong feelings on the subject of distracted driving. “Yeah, sorry, I’ll call you back?”

Traffic’s not bad, though, and he’s home within twenty minutes. He returns Charlie’s call from the elevator, waiting to ascend the fourteen floors to his apartment, and she picks up just as the doors chime open. “Hey,” he says, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“That’s okay,” she says, and though she masters it well, he can tell her voice is shaky with relief. “Not like you, though — you’re usually pretty good at remembering.” He can practically hear her smile bravely against the emotion. “Let me guess: a little head-in-the-clouds after core storage day?”

“You know me well,” Castiel tells her, unlocking his door. “That, and —”

But he stops abruptly. He’s not sure he wants to tell her about Dean; if he does, he’s not sure how. Just a hot guy he’s been fantasizing about? Or a hot guy he’s been fantasizing about — and plans to see again?

“And?” Charlie presses, clearly intrigued.

“Nothing,” says Castiel quickly, blushing even though she can’t see him. “What’s up with you?”

Charlie’s not fooled, he’s sure, but she’s gracious enough to let it go. She dives instead into a series of rapid-fire questions about what type of spectral analysis he uses on his rhythmically bedded core samples, and his head is whirling enough from trying to keep up — he’s not actually a programmer, though he can hold his own — that he forgets to worry about her eventual interrogation entirely.

\---

It doesn’t come until over a week later, and it takes Castiel by surprise when it does.

He’s working from home that day. He has an office at the university, true, but it’s a shared one, and as much as he’d like to think he and his fellow graduate students share a camaraderie and social ease, after three years, he doubts they’ll ever make it past politely awkward coexistence. It doesn’t help that his home PC is outfitted with a top-of-the-line processor and dual monitors, or that the office in his apartment has a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city.

The grad student office has no window at all.

He’d be surprised if his fellow students didn’t resent him, just a little, for his family’s wealth and the resources they invest in him. It certainly makes Castiel uncomfortable sometimes. On the other hand, turning down the condo his parents bought for him would have resulted in a long and fruitless fight, and Castiel _likes_ his computer. He also likes having space to himself.

He usually keeps his chat with Charlie open on his laptop screen on days like this, and he’s perched cross-legged in his desk chair, intent on a recalcitrant MATLAB script, when the _typing_ indicator pops up. When it stays for a long minute, he doesn’t think much of it — Charlie’s as likely to embark on an involved narrative of her latest LARPing adventures as anything — until finally the blinking dots are replaced by a single word:

_So._

Dread pools in Castiel’s gut. His fingers go still on his work keyboard, but he doesn’t transfer them to his laptop. Not yet.

_What’s the thing you were going to tell me?_

Castiel sighs, and pivots in his chair. _It’s not a big deal._

_Bullshit. ;)_

He’s still debating what to answer when she adds, _I’m guessing this is about that rodeo shindig last weekend. Meet a hot Canadian cowboy eh eh? *waggles eyebrows*_

Castiel snorts with laughter at the mental image, and shakes his head. At the very least he can troll her a little back. _Actually, he’s American._

Charlie’s reply comes almost instantly:

_Oh SHIT_  
_Oh shit_  
_You actually did?!_  
_Cas!!!_  
_I want DETAILS_

This was a bad idea. _It’s no big thing,_ he types. _Nothing happened._

Charlie’s reply this time is more articulate, though it’s clearly an effort. _Cas. Castiel. If YOU feel the need to clarify that nothing happened, then clearly this is GIGANTIC. Is he interested??_

Castiel hesitates. _I don’t know._ And then, in a fit of daring: _I’m seeing him again this weekend._

There’s a long silence from Charlie’s end. Just when he’s started to worry that he’s actually caused her head to explode this time, she responds, almost soberly, _Shit, Cas. I don’t even know what to say. I’m so freaking proud of you. How are you feeling about it?_

_Fine._ Cas bites his lip in mild annoyance. _It’s really not a big deal. It’s probably all in my head._ He’s definitely not going to tell Charlie that Dean specifically asked him to come down; that they’re spending — he thinks — the better part of a day together. He does add, grinning slightly to himself: _He was the bareback champion. At the rodeo._

Charlie’s response this time is swift: _Eh ehhhh ;) ;) ;)_

_Charlie. That’s really not how Canadians use eh._

_Maybe not,_ she answers, _but it’s how *I* do. :D_

Shaking his head, Castiel returns to his work.

\---

The thing is — telling Charlie makes it real.

His fantasies of Dean, already an agreeable standby, are quickly becoming part of the fabric of his daily thoughts. They invade his dreams, too, more and more insistently filthy, until it strikes him that it will be quite difficult to look the man himself in the face without blushing from the roots of his hair to his toes.

He also develops a nagging fear that he made up the whole thing. Not just the tension between them, but the invitation itself — a product of his fevered mind, a late night after a long day, and too much imagination paired with too little of the real thing. By Friday, he’s going back and forth on an hourly basis: Did Dean actually invite him? Did he mean it if he did? Should Castiel stay away, or should he go?

He’s on campus that day for a meeting with his advisor, Rowena — a younger female professor in whose lab he technically works. He knows some of the other students complain about her, but he likes her hands-off, sink-or-swim style just fine — they’ve always gotten along well. Still, she’s got some kind of magic with time-series analysis, and MATLAB still isn’t cooperating, so Castiel takes it to her.

She irons out his problem in less than five minutes, then spends another, increasingly impatient twenty trying to explain to him what exactly he did wrong. By the time he leaves, he’s got a headache, but thinks he’s on the way to figuring it out.

He’s also starving, and in dire need of a coffee. He’s not overly fond of the food court on campus, but his feet take him there anyway, falling into line for one of the three separate Tim Horton’s that are apparently required by the University’s student body. He’s just pulling out his phone to check his email when someone bumps into him — a group of girls, laughing as they try to thread their way through the long lunchtime queue to the Greek joint next door.

Castiel steps back to make way, but the last of them stops in her tracks, catching his arm. “Castiel!”

He looks up. The girl with her hand on his arm is pretty in an anonymously blonde sort of way, and it takes him a minute to place her as Jo Harvelle.

“Jo,” he manages after a moment, reeling. “I — didn’t know — do you go here?”

She nods. “Pre-vet. And business administration. I told Mom I’d learn more about both by helping at the ranch full time, but that’s moms for you, I guess.” She surveys him. “You’re a student here too?”

“A graduate student,” Castiel qualifies. “In geology.”

“Right,” she says. “Listen — you’re coming down tomorrow, right? Dean’s pretty excited.”

Castiel blinks. “He said so?”

Jo’s nose wrinkles with her smile. “It’s not hard to tell. Anyway, I thought I should — I think Dean’s taking you riding, so dress for it, okay? You’ll look pretty stupid if you show up in slacks or whatever.”

It’s a bit too much to process. “How does one dress for riding?”

“Y’know. Jeans.” Jo casts a critical eye over him. “Maybe a little looser than what you’ve got on. Though I’m sure he wouldn’t mind those — I certainly don’t.”

She winks as she turns away, and Castiel’s still standing there speechless, utterly unaware that the line has moved on without him, when she whirls back to add, “Oh, and wear blue, won’t you? It brings out your eyes.”

\---

When Castiel pulls into the Walking L the next morning, he’s wearing a brand new pair of work jeans — which is stupid, he already has field pants, he’s a geologist for God’s sake, but Jo psyched him out and nothing he had seemed right — and his favorite blue button-down, the one that’s sturdy and comfortable and a bit too worn from overuse to keep in the workday rotation. It’s eight o’clock on the dot, because while Castiel wavered back and forth on what exactly “early” might mean, once decided, he is nothing if not punctual.

Dean’s clattering down the bunkhouse steps the moment he pulls into the yard. He’s in red flannel and the ever-present hat, and under it, he’s grinning. “Day’s half gone. Look who decided to show!”

Despite his words, he’s practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, and Castiel can’t help grinning in return as he slides out of his car. “My mistake. I thought you might need your beauty sleep.”

Dean throws his head back in a laugh, and warmth flows through Castiel’s veins, melting away his worry. His eyes linger on the curve of Dean’s neck, his stubble, and when Dean catches him looking, his smile only grows. Several seconds pass before they realize they’ve both been grinning at each other like idiots, and then Dean clears his throat hastily and says, in a slightly deeper voice, “So, uh. I thought we’d take the horse trailer ‘round the river and ride out from there. That work for you?”

Castiel exhales, still unable to govern his cheek muscles, a little dizzy with it. “Yeah. Yes. Sounds good.”

“All right, then,” says Dean. “Let’s load ‘er up.”

\---

They take the same old pickup Castiel was sure would fail two weeks ago, this time with a horse trailer in tow. It putters down the highway at barely 60 kilometers per hour, but everyone who passes them waves at Dean, and he tips his hat cheerfully back. Floss sits regal in the seat between them, surveying the road, and allows Castiel to tangle his fingers in the fine fur behind her ears.

He’s struggling to keep abreast of his own emotions. Half an hour ago, he was rehearsing sober, work-related conversation in his car; he feels now as if there’s been some slip in reality, a gap in time and space, because he and Dean are sitting in this truck cab buzzing with giddy energy, like — like his being here is the best thing to happen to Dean all week, as it is to Castiel, and if that’s true, it _means_ things, though not things that Castiel is quite prepared to believe are real.

The turnoff is immediately after the bridge, down a sharp gravel embankment and into a dense stand of the poplars that fringe the river. Entering it is like sliding into a green tunnel — the trees have finally leafed out in earnest, as have the bushes that hem in the road: wolf willow, buffaloberry, dogwood with its white flowers and red stems. They bump along through it for another two minutes or so, then emerge into an open swath of grass, where Dean pulls the truck in a broad left turn, circling halfway around to park.

Castiel follows him to the back of the trailer to unload the horses. Their coats are white and chestnut brown, not unlike Floss, a scheme that Castiel ventures to describe as paint and Dean corrects him to pinto. “Paint’s for breeders,” he clarifies. “Pinto just means a pony that looks like these fine ladies. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?” he adds softly to the one who just lipped his sleeve, and she whickers in agreement.

“All right,” continues Dean, ushering him forward. “Castiel, meet Esmeralda — she’ll be carrying you around today. And don’t look at me like that, Jo had a Disney phase.”

“What’s your horse named?” Castiel inquires, curious.

“Daphne. And we’re not talking about it,” Dean says with a stern look. “Now, tack.”

He takes Castiel through the process of saddling his horse, adjusting the stirrups and cinching down the saddlebags — they’re heavy, though Dean doesn’t comment on their contents — and placing the bridle. Then comes getting _into_ the saddle, which he’s proud not to struggle with — it’s easier than it was at age six — though a small part of his brain notes Dean standing at the ready, should he need help, and feels tempted to falter.

Once he’s settled on Esmeralda, Dean circles him with a critical eye, adjusting his posture and seat with light, confident touches. By the time he’s sitting properly, Castiel’s hips and knees are burning from contact, and when Dean moves to adjust his grip on the reins, he has to stop himself from jerking shyly away.

He doesn’t, though, and Dean’s hands are gentle on his, turning his palm carefully and laying the leather across it before smoothing his thumb back in place. He's talking as he does it, explaining the whys, something about styles of reining, but Castiel doesn’t hear a damn thing.

When Dean finishes, he stands back, a wry look on his face as if he knows his words have been wasted. “She’s a good horse,” he adds. “Stay on her back and you’ll be fine.” But he purses his lips, still studying Castiel as if he finds something amiss.

Abruptly, he turns and strides back toward the truck. Castiel cranes his neck to see what he’s doing, but when Esmeralda shuffles restlessly beneath him, he realizes he’s pulling the reins as he turns, and relents.

Dean returns with the cowboy hat that’s been sitting on the passenger side dash. “It’s Jo’s,” he explains, grinning, “but I don’t think she’ll mind.”

At his gesture, Castiel leans down, and Dean places the hat solemnly and carefully on his head. When he straightens, Dean’s eyes track him, darker than before, unreadable, and Castiel swallows. “Good?”

“Yeah,” says Dean, and goes to mount his own horse without further elaboration.

\---

Whatever thoughtful, quiet mood has overtaken Castiel, it seems to be catching.

At the crest of the first hill, Dean explains that this side of the ranch is all summer range; that they trailed the cattle up here earlier in May, in herds that will rotate between pasture blocks until weaning in the fall. They ride by one such herd, and the cows observe them closely, tails switching and jaws working at their cud. After that, though, the conversation fades into quiet, and the land into wild, empty splendor.

Castiel worries briefly that he’s done something to upset Dean into silence, but it’s hard to remember his anxiety in the face of this much beauty. They ride through prairie and sage, winding on narrow trails down bluffs eroding out of Tertiary sandstone, crossing lush creek bottoms and climbing again to ridges with long views of mountains to the west and the endless plains to the east. Occasionally, they arrive at barbed wire gates, and Dean dismounts easily, unhooking the loops of wire that hold free-hanging wooden fenceposts in place and dragging them open for the ponies to pass through.

Floss orbits them in long arcs, vanishing for lengthy stretches and reappearing, panting happily, atop the next hill. After half an hour of riding, a long gray cloud obscures the sun, casting the prairie in a denser, closer green. Even when Castiel looks down at Esmeralda’s feet, uncomfortable with his seat on an unexpected descent, he finds golden prairie pea blooming in the dust among her hooves, their path fringed by heavy clusters of shadbush flowers that perch on their shrubby branches like clumps of snow. The chorus of birdsong is constant, parting around them in an envelope of silence as they pass, but everywhere else bubbling from the land like the prairie’s own living breath.

Castiel has complicated feelings about his father’s God. Days like this make it hard to wholly reject him.

When Dean finally brings them to a halt, it’s after two or more hours of riding, on a broad bench carpeted with tiny, nodding flowers of dusky pink. “Prairie smoke,” he says, when he sees Castiel looking, and the sound of it makes him start.  It’s the first time either of them has spoken since ascending out of the river valley. He searches for a light to find the words in his spellbound mind.

“The flower,” Dean clarifies, after a moment, sounding as unsure of his own voice as Castiel feels. “It’s called prairie smoke.”

“It’s beautiful,” Castiel manages, and his voice scrapes on the words. He looks up at Dean to find him watching him, green eyes quiet and intent.

Dean takes a moment to break the gaze, swinging his leg over his horse as he does. “C’mere,” he says, “I want to show you something.”

He offers a hand, and Castiel takes it, muscles protesting as he moves to dismount. If he wobbles, Dean takes his weight easily, and his touch lingers a moment longer than it needs to once Castiel has both feet firm on solid ground, eyes hovering on his face.

When he releases him, their fingertips brush briefly across each other. Dean turns and leads the way down the ridge, only fifty paces or so, before stopping to give Castiel a chance to catch up.

He’s standing in front of a ring of stones, each perhaps the size of Castiel’s head, nestled in the gently blowing grass. They’re all different kinds, pink and white and pale blue-gray; transported from the mountains, Castiel thinks, by a long-ago glacier or river or both. To cross the circle might take him seven or eight strides. It’s not hard to envision a cone of hide or canvas rising from its perimeter, stretched tight around a bristling wooden frame, weighted down by the lichen-encrusted stones.

“A tipi ring?” he asks, looking to Dean.

He receives a nod of confirmation in response. “They used to hunt buffalo here. There’s more, down the ridge.” He’s quiet for a moment, eyes on the nearest stone. “I found a cover, years back. On a bit of land we lease from the Blackfeet Nation. They paint them these incredible designs, and when they wear out, just leave them out for the sky. Let them melt back into the prairie again.”

“That’s poetic,” Castiel comments.

Dean gives him a half-shoulder shrug. “I almost took it home. It was cool-looking. Glad I didn’t; I learned later it’s a big insult.”

That startles Castiel into a laugh, cracking the shell of unreality around his soul. “I’m glad you didn’t too, then.”

Dean turns a smile on him. “Wanna look around?”

They find half a dozen more tipi sites, some fainter than others. The small rings, Dean says, are from before there were horses here, when the only pack animals were dogs. Castiel observes that they must be hundreds of years old, then, and Dean scratches his jaw and agrees. It’s strange, Castiel thinks, to imagine the centuries-old visitors to this place, in times before there were fences. He wonders if they too looked out from this ridge with their minds on anything but buffalo; if they too dreamed monstrously of impossible things.

Dean retrieves sandwiches from the saddlebags for lunch, and Castiel sits beside him on a sun-warmed rock to eat. It feels nothing like a professional tour, or an investment pitch. They’ve abandoned the old pretenses, but still shy away from the new ones.

“How was your rodeo last weekend?” he asks, in search of something, remembering.

“Good enough.” Dean rolls his neck as he chews on a large bite. “Got third.”

“Your hand was all right? From the bull?”

“Little finger’s broken.” Dean smiles at Castiel’s jolt of alarm. “It’s fine. Doesn’t keep me from riding.”

“It must hurt, though.”

Dean shrugs.

Sensing that he’s closing Dean off, Castiel swallows, his sense of himself rushing back. “I’m sorry. I — am not accustomed to the realities of your profession. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

Dean gives him an odd, soft look and says, quietly, “You’re all good, Cas.”

Castiel’s skin prickles. It’s the first time Dean’s used his nickname. He opens his mouth, searching for something to say, and closes it again, at a loss.

“Want to keep going?” Dean asks, watching him closely. “You’re not used to riding. It’s all right if you don’t.”

His stiff muscles will curse him tomorrow. But Dean’s given him an out; a further moratorium on considering how to smooth his tangled thoughts into the puny vessel of his skin. More time to process. More time to — decide.

He hasn’t realized, until this moment, that deciding is the name for the task at hand. It’s reassuring to understand that much, at least.

Besides, he’s not sure he could turn down Dean’s time regardless, when freely offered. Castiel says, “Please.”

\---

After that, at last, the air loosens between them. The sun comes out, and with it, the conversation that’s been trapped on both their tongues. They ride side by side, Floss loping ahead of them, and Castiel tells Dean about growing up in Houston; about Dartmouth, and his friendship with Charlie; then, haltingly, sure he’s going to bore Dean, about the work he’s doing for his Ph.D.

If Dean’s attention wanders, he doesn’t show it, just asks, “It’s five years, right? A Ph.D.?”

“If you’re efficient,” Castiel hedges. “I spent two years interning with my father’s company after college, so I’m only finishing my third year now.”

“So you’re — twenty-eight.”

“Twenty-seven,” Castiel corrects him. Then, at the look Dean’s giving him, “What?”

“Nothing,” says Dean. “Same as me.”

Castiel swallows. He can’t help but feel shamed by that comparison; that Dean has — well, he’s clearly _lived_ in that time, at the very least learned how to ride a bucking bronco. Castiel’s entire tenure on the Earth has been provided for and circumscribed by his father’s interests. “How long have you been at the Walking L?” he asks.

“Uh.” It takes Dean a moment to answer, squinting ahead. “Four years, I guess, more or less. I used to come up in the summers sometimes, before that. Me and Bobby go way back.”

Castiel hesitates, unsure what else to say. Dean’s life story feels like uncertain ground — he knows it has its dark patches, and Dean _knows_ he knows, after what Clayton said at the rodeo. Castiel has no idea whether to acknowledge that, never mind how.

He’s just formulating a polite change of subject when Dean speaks again, gaze on the horizon. “I helped him out at this ranch in Wyoming for a summer when I was thirteen. Not for pay or anything, my dad was just having a rough time and needed somewhere to put us, and Bobby let us stay for a while. He was working as the mechanic at this place outside Laramie with a big grain operation, all kinds of equipment that needed fixing, but he really kinda did everything that needed doing around the place, too. Taught me to weld, and how to rope and ride, and didn’t take it outta my hide too badly when I snuck a ride on my first bronc.”

Watching his face, Castiel sees him smile at the memory, glancing down at his hands on Daphne’s reins. “Then the next year he moved up here to help Ellen out, and the year after, I brought Sammy — that’s my brother — up for a couple months. Had a hell of a time at the border, but we got through. Been coming up ever since.”

Castiel’s heart thumps uncomfortably. He wants to take Dean’s hands in his. “You moved around a lot,” he says.

“Yeah.” Dean glances sidelong at him. “Look, you don’t have to — my family’s got some shit, it is what it is. Mom died when I was a little kid, Dad could never really settle down after, you know the score.”

Castiel really doesn’t. “I’m sorry,” he says, anxiety twisting in his chest. “It was rude of me to ask.”

“Stop worrying about being rude,” Dean says, but his tone is short suddenly, abrupt, his face going harder. “I’m really not —”

He stops.

When Castiel turns to look at him, he’s gone alert, sitting straight in his saddle, eyes on the willows down in the draw to their left. Before Cas can ask what’s wrong, he puts his fingers to his mouth and lets out a piercing whistle.

Floss melts out of the grass ahead of them. Dean murmurs to her, “Stay close now, will you, girl?”

Clueless, Castiel lets his horse follow Dean’s down into the little valley, swallowing against the uncomfortable jolting of the descent and insisting to himself that he’s not going to slide forward over Esmeralda’s ears. They’re nearly to the bushes when he hears it — a distressed mooing, from somewhere he can’t see.

“Stand,” Dean says tersely to Floss, who stops where she is. He swings from his saddle without looking at Cas, and pushes his way into the willows.

Castiel can’t see what’s going on. A moment later, though, he hears Dean’s voice, gentler than he’d dreamed it could go: “Hey, sweetheart. Got yourself a little tangled up, huh? Mom leave without you?”

Esmeralda shifts a little on her feet, affording Castiel a glimpse through the dense branches of Dean bending over a small, orange-brown calf. There’s a fence that runs through the draw, he realizes — and the calf has somehow gotten itself caught in the wire.

“There you go,” Dean murmurs. “Oh, look — you’re all right. There.”

There’s a twanging of wires, and a moment later, the calf springs to its feet, prancing away up the hill on the other side of the fence. Castiel can see it clearly for the first time now — there’s a thin line of blood on its right hind leg, but it doesn’t look too badly hurt. It shakes its head vigorously, eyeing Castiel and the horses.

Dean emerges from the thicket with willow leaves on his hat brim, face warring between annoyance and relief. “That bit of fence has been a problem for years. Listen — would you mind waiting while I try and get this guy back to the herd? His mom’s a heifer, doesn’t know what she’s doing yet — she probably went off with the rest when he got tangled.”

“Of course, Dean,” says Cas. The name feels heavy on his tongue — electric. Like the air before a storm.

Dean glances sharply at him, but his only response is, “Thanks.” He uses the heel of his hand to depress the top strand of the barbed wire fence, and swings one leg over it, then the other. Once on the other side, he whistles to Floss, and she springs immediately into motion, darting under the fence in a low crouch. The calf starts away from her, but she immediately stops, lying low in the grass and watching it, intent.

“Come on then, sweetheart,” Dean tells the calf, and starts calmly up the hillside, letting out another, more complex whistle as he does.

Floss creeps forward again. The calf eyes her warily. Dean isn’t looking at either of them, just walking away as if he hasn’t a care in the world.

Then the calf snorts, stamps, and wheels around, trotting up the hill after Dean. He doesn’t turn back to look, just holds out his right hand as if to be held by an invisible child. He keeps it there, at an angle to his body, and the calf seems to track it, head bobbing as it walks. Floss trails patiently behind, weaving through the grass, pressing closer when the calf shows signs of distraction. In little more than a minute, all three of them have disappeared over the crest of the hill.

Castiel blinks, shaking his head at his own surprise. He’d entirely forgotten that the dog was more than a pet. It reminds him of seeing Dean on that horse, two weeks ago — of thinking, _oh, so this is what you were built to do._

He thinks that probably they both belong here — out in this sky. That any other guise they wear is a polite act, constructed for the comfort of that alien species that sits behind desks and signs papers and squints at the glare of a screen.

He wonders if he is irretrievably alien. He wonders if there is anywhere in the world he’s truly meant to be.

When Dean reappears over the crest of the hill, he looks happy, hands tucked in his pockets, gait rolling on the descent. Floss trots alongside him, tongue hanging out of her mouth in a wide grin.

“They weren’t far,” Dean tells Castiel as he crosses the fence again. “Heifer ran right up to that calf as if she hadn’t just abandoned him. Good thing we came by.” Relief shines from his face, and he doesn’t go straight to his horse, but stops to beam up at Cas. “Ready to keep going?”

Castiel can’t find his voice. He knew Dean was attractive; knew he had swagger and skill and a past and a love of this place. He didn’t know how Dean would look when he reunited a mother cow with her calf. He didn’t know that the sight would make his own soul sigh with gratitude and contentment, whispering something dangerously close to _home._

The afternoon sun is high, but sinking. He doesn’t know where they’re going. He can scarcely track who he is, never mind where they’ve been.

It doesn’t matter. Dean is asking. Castiel says, “Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today in Canadian country music as source material: Corb Lund, [Especially A Paint](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0xBGdChb14).


	4. The Reef

The shadows are long by the time they reach the foot of the mountains. The country is wilder here, sparser, with stands of pine and aspen groves swallowing the hills’ north slopes. The ground is rockier, too, and the horses move slowly, heads nodding sedately as they walk.

Dean reins them to a halt on a grassy hillside littered with pale, jagged boulders. He helps Castiel from his horse without asking, smiling as his arms tense to balance his unsteady weight.

Castiel catches his breath and takes a couple steps away, working out the stiffness in his legs. He’s aware of Dean’s eyes on him. He stretches carefully, propping one foot on a boulder and bending at the waist, and nearly groans at his body’s protest.

That’s when he sees the rock his heel is resting on.

“Dean,” he says. “This is coral.”

He turns to find Dean grinning. All around him are more of the pale white boulders, and they’re all the same — each made up of hundreds of fossil polyps, or rather, the skeletons they built: twining, interconnected pillars of calcium carbonate, preserved for nearly 400 million years.

The reef must be somewhere on the mountain above them, Castiel thinks. These blocks would have tumbled down the slope.

“ _Dean,_ ” he says again, at a loss.

Dean ducks his head as if to hide his smile under his hat. “Thought we might turn out the ponies to graze for a bit. You look around, I’ll cook us up some dinner?”

Castiel mouths soundlessly. “I — thank you.”

“No need to thank me,” says Dean, but he looks beyond pleased with himself as he turns to Daphne’s saddlebags.

Dean invited him to look around, so Castiel starts up the hill, pausing frequently to run his fingers over more blocks of _Syringopora_ and _Acinophyllum._ Even the thin walls within the coral tubes are preserved, the surrounding material weathered out so they stand out like tiny stars. He finds solitary _Bighornia_ corals, too, the length of the first joint of his thumb, and intricate spiriferid shells, flared like wings. He slips samples into his pockets as he climbs, and quickly grows sweaty despite his slow pace.

He finds the reef two hundred meters or more above the spot where Dean’s now started a small campfire: a wide, gently sloping ledge. Castiel’s been snorkeling with his family before, in Belize; the reefs there were fascinating, and colorful, but there’s something that will always call to him about one whose denizens are long extinct; about a once-upon-a-time ocean floor crumbling block by block out of the Rocky Mountains, hundreds of miles from the nearest sea.

He sits on the ledge and watches Dean below him. He’s turned the horses loose, apparently unconcerned that they might wander, and is tossing scraps to Floss as he prepares something in a broad pot that sits directly in the fire. The shadow of the hill is creeping toward the little camp; summer at northern latitudes means long days, but it’s nearly seven in the evening, all the same.

A sense of absolute contentment steals over Castiel. He brushes his fingertips across the rough coral head at his side. In the distance, a hawk teeters on a breath of wind, spiraling higher into the atmosphere. The view east is absolutely lovely in the low-angle sun, green from the recent rains, every hill limned in golden sunlight and shadow. Castiel can see a distant herd of cattle. He wonders if the calf Dean rescued is among them.

When he returns to the fire, Dean is sitting back and prodding at it with a stick, looking just as deeply at peace as Castiel feels. For some reason, that sends a shock of something electric through his belly: anxiety, maybe, or the realization that they’re both face to face with this thing that they still haven’t named.

Castiel’s pockets are heavy with rocks. He’d planned to tell Dean about them. Instead, he says, “What are we doing here?”

Dean’s head jerks toward him in surprise. His mouth is open, and a flush creeps up his jaw. “I — was cooking dinner,” he says.

There’s a flat-topped rock beside the one he’s taken for a seat, barely a handsbreath away. Castiel advances carefully and sinks onto it, feeling braver than he ever has in his life. “No,” he says, “what are we _doing_ here?”

There’s no doubt about it from this distance. Dean’s blushing deeply, his gaze on his hands where they still hold the stick. His shoulders are turned toward Castiel, but his head is low, in profile, and when he glances up to meet Castiel’s eyes, he quickly looks away.

That’s what gives Castiel the courage, somehow. They’re both still wearing their hats. Castiel reaches out, as gently as he can, to remove Dean’s from his head. Then he places two fingers against his jaw and turns his face and kisses him.

It’s a soft press of lips, gentle and brief. Dean makes a tiny, shocked noise, like the sudden heartbeat of a bird, and Castiel releases him, drops his hand and retreats back out of Dean’s space and watches his eyes as his own heart thunders in his chest.

Dean stares for only a moment. Then he reaches out and hooks his fingers in Castiel’s shirt and pulls them together again.

It’s nothing like Castiel’s first kiss with a man. That encounter was drunken and sloppy, leaving Castiel with swollen lips and a tang of stale beer on his tongue and the sensation that someone had just tried lick his mouth right out of his face. This is sudden and slow and urgent, _needy,_ light, Dean’s hand skimming down Castiel’s bicep, Dean knocking his borrowed cowboy hat back on his head, Dean kissing Castiel like he’s water after a long drought, to be savored, sanctified, rationed.

He kisses Castiel like it’s a priceless, singular thing.

When they break apart, his hand stays curled around the back of Castiel’s neck, foreheads resting together, his voice half-breathless as he confesses, “I was hoping you’d like my cooking enough that you wouldn’t freak out when I kissed you.”

“I see,” says Castiel gravely.

“Shut up,” says Dean.

Castiel pushes him back, gently, far enough to meet his eyes. “Would you like to find out?”

\---

Dean’s cooking is utterly delicious: hominy with chilies, pork, and beans. It’s simple trail food, but seasoned to perfection, and Dean rambles about the old cowboy days as they eat, how beans and salt pork and sourdough starter were the only things that would keep for long drives; how the old-time cowboys would trail cattle from Texas to Montana and back again. He talks of chuckwagons and cattle rustlers and sheriffs and outlaws, and Cas thinks that maybe Dean’s chosen line of work isn’t a mere product of circumstance.

It warms something deep inside him. He wonders if he looks this happy when he’s talking about fossils; if his own monologue while emptying his pockets earlier made Dean feel like he does now. It seems impossible to credit, but then, Castiel left his sense of disbelief somewhere miles of trail behind them.

Dean serves him a second portion when he finishes his first, and he continues gulping it down, surprised at his own hunger. Dean takes advantage of his preoccupation to clean the pot and his own bowl, which Castiel would feel guilty about if he weren’t so single-mindedly devoted to his food. “Looks like you like it, then,” he says as he shakes water from the dishes, and there’s a soft smile playing at the corners of his lips.

It’s fortunate that he is one of the best-looking men Castiel has ever known, because he also might be the stupidest.

“I can’t believe you thought that wouldn’t work,” he tells him, and licks off his spoon. He returns it to the bowl and sets them both down with a clatter. “Really, I’m almost —”

The next word comes out as a muffled grunt of surprise as Dean’s mouth covers his own.

His fingers close hard on Cas’s collar, and he tilts his head just so, angling their mouths together so his tongue slides, perfect and electric, across Castiel’s. Castiel groans, suddenly and completely turned on, and draws Dean closer, fumbling at the hem of his shirt until his fingers find skin, soft and smooth and feverishly warm, and then they’re toppling back into the grass and Dean is cradling his head protectively against impact and still kissing him. His skin shivers under Castiel’s hand, sliding up his ribs and over his chest, and he breaks suddenly, inhaling sharply and staring down at Cas.

He’s perfect. Every inch of him is perfect, full lips and broad jaw and wide, wondering eyes, and Cas _growls_ somewhere in his throat and takes Dean by the hips and flips them, so that Dean’s the one with his back in the grass, ribs arching against him, straining up to keep kissing him, desperate, like he’s not the one that took all day and failed to make a move.

“You’re as bad at this as I am,” Castiel accuses him, between kisses. “You’re _shy._ I can’t — believe you’re — shy.” Dean kisses the tender skin of his throat, and he groans.

“You know what,” Dean answers unsteadily, “I found you fossils, you — asshole, I —” He gasps as Castiel slides a leg between his, and continues, “— cooked you dinner, that’s gotta count for — something, here —”

“You’re a badass cowboy,” Castiel informs him, kissing him hard enough to press him back into the grass. When he pulls back, Dean doesn’t chase him but grins, basking in the compliment. “You’re basically the sexiest man alive. How can you _possibly_ be shy?”

“Well,” Dean drawls, “when you’re the sexiest man alive, you don’t usually have to try very — _hard —_ ”

The last word turns almost into a whine as Castiel grinds their hips together, his own erection pressing suddenly against Dean’s through a double layer of denim. “I can’t fucking _believe_ you,” he says, and bends his head to kiss the side of Dean’s neck.

“You’re the — one who stepped — back, on the — hill —” Dean pants, and Castiel runs a hand through the short bristles of his hair and retorts, “Well that’s because I’m in the _closet_ and I’ve never been with a _man_ before,” and he —

is in the closet

and has never been with a man before.

“Shit,” says Dean into the sudden, yawning silence. “Cas?”

He should respond. He can’t. The silence crawls in his ears and down his throat, and he trembles with the horror of it, but he doesn’t know what to _say_.

Dean is looking at him — just looking at him, with an unbearable kindness in his eyes, and Castiel can’t stand it, he _can’t,_ he drops his head with a shaking breath to press against Dean’s chest, just so he can hide his face for a moment, just so he can not be observed, but one of Dean’s arms comes up around his shoulders and the other hand tangles in his hair, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. They’re gentle, so gentle that Cas knows he could pull free of them in a heartbeat if he wanted, but he doesn’t want. Dean’s thumb sweeps slow circles behind his ear.

“It’s okay,” he’s murmuring. “It’s okay, sweetheart, it’s okay.”

It’s so similar to how he talked to the tangled calf that Castiel snorts with laughter, and immediately freezes, terrified that he’s gotten snot on Dean’s shirt. If he has, Dean ignores it, only says, “Think you can look at me?”

Castiel considers the question. Staying pressed to Dean’s chest is a good option, but Dean might want it back, at some point. Mustering his courage, he lifts his head, and levers himself up off Dean’s body. Dean stops him from going further with a gentle touch. His face is still flushed, but calm now, eyes careful on Castiel’s face. He brushes a hand gently over his cheek, and Castiel shivers. Only then does he realize he’s stopped trembling.

“Hey,” says Dean. Then, again: “Hey. No pressure, okay? We can leave right now if you want; we can sit here and throw things in the fire all night long. But if it’s your first time, I’d like it to be good for you. I’d like to make it good for you. Would that be okay?”

“I —” Castiel swallows. “Yes.”

“All right,” says Dean, still watching him closely. “Listen. You tell me to stop anytime, okay? I will. No questions asked.” When Castiel takes a shuddering breath and doesn’t answer, he adds, “You gotta promise me, sweetheart. You’ll tell me if you want me to stop.”

“I will,” Castiel manages. He thinks of the guy in the bar, of his needy hands, of the way he caught Castiel’s hips as he tried to escape. “I promise.”

“Okay,” says Dean, and kisses him.

It’s slow and gentle and open-mouthed, and Castiel falls into it, kissing Dean hungrily back and gripping his shoulder with a trembling hand. Dean doesn’t protest, just takes Castiel apart slowly, kisses turning deep and filthy as his hands explore Castiel’s body, over his clothes: arms, chest, stomach, thighs, hips. Castiel makes a tiny, frustrated noise and grinds against him, but when his own hands slip under Dean’s shirt again, when they skim the waistband of Dean’s jeans, Dean murmurs, _let me,_ and then, as he undoes the first button of Castiel’s shirt, _this okay?_

Castiel nods his sharp-breathed assent, and Dean asks _this okay_ again when he slips the shirt from Castiel’s shoulders, _this okay_ when he draws the undershirt over his head, _this okay_ when he unbuckles his belt and splits open his fly and works his jeans down over his hips and slips his fingers into the dense curls surrounding Castiel’s cock.

Castiel lets out an inarticulate cry, and then, almost desperately, “ _Yes,_ it’s okay, Jesus Christ, Dean, _do_ something,” and Dean does, and Castiel doesn’t understand it, because he’s done this plenty of times for himself, it shouldn’t be _this_ different at the hands of someone else, but it is, it _is,_ it’s the best thing he’s ever felt, and Dean is practically glowing beneath him, eyes hungry as he watches Castiel tremble apart at the seams, and then he’s coming, all over Dean’s shirt, and he’s shaking and cupping Dean’s head in his hand and kissing him so hard, so deeply, he’s surprised that neither of them runs out of air.

Afterward, once Dean has shed his stained flannel with a good-natured joke about how it’s too warm for it out, anyway, and once Castiel has reclaimed his own shirt because he sort of disagrees, and once Dean has been appropriately shamed for the revelation that he brought bedrolls and blankets in the event they wound up spending the night, they curl up together to watch the fire. They start out side by side, both on their backs, but somehow Dean settles closer, then closer still, and winds up with his head propped half on Castiel’s chest. 

It’s a novel feeling, and sends an unfamiliar warmth through Castiel’s chest. The women he’s been with have curled up with him like this, yes, but it always felt like a claim on him, a — violation. With Dean, it feels like a privilege.

“There’s got to be some catch to this,” he observes lazily, marveling at the fact that he’s allowed to stroke his thumb over Dean’s shoulder. “You’re an internationally wanted criminal. You’re secretly the prince of — Azerbaijan.”

“No and no,” Dean answers, and circles a thumb over Castiel’s stomach.

“You can’t want to marry me for my money; I’m from Texas.”

Dean raises his head to give Castiel a mock-serious look. “You could take your money to Canada. Or Massachusetts.”

“Unfortunately,” Castiel tells him, “very little of my money is actually mine. Feel free to run for the hills.”

Dean drops his head back to Castiel’s shoulder. “Nah, I’ll stay. You’ve got the blankets.”

Castiel laughs. “I can’t believe you brought blankets. Has anyone ever told you that you have a lot of confidence for someone with absolutely no game?”

“Hey,” Dean protests. “Boy Scout motto, y’know. I like to be prepared.”

The image of Dean in a uniform provokes another snort of laughter. “You were a Boy Scout?”

“Well,” says Dean, “no. I wanted to be, for a while. Hard to join a troop when you moved around as much as we did.”

A lump of sadness forms in Castiel’s chest. “I was,” he says, as lightly as he can. “Eagle Scout, even. My dad told me when he signed me up as a Cub that it would look good on my resume if I ran for political office someday.”

Dean doesn’t laugh, just adjusts his head on Castiel’s shoulder. “He told that to a six-year-old?”

“Yeah.”

Dean huffs out a breath. “Quite a dad you got there, Cas.” It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking.

Castiel considers, slightly regretting the choice of topic. “He’s not a bad man. He has an enormous sense of honor. And he was very loving when my siblings and I were young. He’s just… rigid.”

Dean’s quiet for a long time. Castiel finds that it’s hard to hold onto his worry, lying here by the fire as the dark gathers slowly, mind lulled by the occasional spark from the fire and the multiplying stars. Then Dean says: “I guess my dad’s a little the same way.”

Castiel tenses. “Does he — know? About —?”

He falters, but Dean seems to know what he means; he laughs, at any rate, as if he does. “You wanna know something stupid?”

Cas can’t formulate a response. _Nothing about you could be stupid,_ he wants to say. Fortunately, Dean seems to take his silence as an affirmative, because he continues, “I don’t actually _know._ If he knows.”

Castiel blinks. “I don’t understand.”

“I mean —” Dean makes a vague, frustrated gesture in the air above them. “I never exactly hid it from him, you know? But we weren’t really a — _meet the parents_ type of family, and whatever dump we were staying in wasn’t usually a place I wanted to bring anyone back to, so…” He trails off, shrugging against Castiel’s side. “Still. If he paid any kind of attention, it would’ve been pretty hard to miss.” These last words come out with a bitter sting to them, and he doesn’t say anything more.

Castiel considers. He wants to know more; could ask more. But Dean’s not volunteering it, and he’s not sure what kind of question to formulate, so instead he says, “My family was the definition of a _meet the parents_ type family. My girlfriends practically had to audition for the part. Their parents, too. My mother would host a dinner party, and if anyone used the wrong fork —”

He’s embellishing slightly, but it’s worth it, because Dean’s belly laugh shakes him out of whatever brooding place he’s gone. “You’re bi, then?” he asks, when he’s done.

Castiel feels a swoop of terror. This is it, then. It’s idiotic — that he’s still scared of the word, after he and Dean already — but he can’t keep the tremor from his voice when he says: “Actually, I’m gay.”

It’s the first time he’s ever said it out loud.

He’s _said_ it before. In chat with Charlie, in his own mind; he certainly implied it when he went to the gay club. But he’s never — he’s never —

“Shit,” breathes Dean. “They really did a number on you, huh?”

He’s craned around so he can see Castiel’s face, and his fingers fumble for his hand. When he finds it, Cas can’t help but return his grip, so tightly that he feels his own bones creak, shaking, breath hitching.

“Easy,” murmurs Dean. “Breathe. Just breathe. Follow mine, okay? Here.” He draws Cas’s hand to his chest. “Breathe in with me, that’s it.”

Cas can feel Dean’s rib cage expanding, and manages to follow suit. Their chests press together, then subside again on the exhale, and Dean murmurs, “Yeah, that’s just right, you’re doing perfect,” before inhaling deeply again, squeezing Castiel’s hand in silent encouragement.

Castiel loses track of the number of breaths. It might be several minutes before he finally feels calm enough to open his eyes; it might be hours. When he does, he realizes to his horror that he’s crying.

“Shit,” he breathes. “Shit, I’m sorry, you _so_ did not sign up for this.”

“I signed up for you,” Dean answers easily. Then, offering a bandana: “Here, it’s clean. Blow.”

Castiel gives him an incredulous look past the sudden fringe of red against his face.

Dean laughs, and raises his hands in surrender. “Have it your way. But it _is_ clean.”

Castiel consents to mop his face only because it’s hard to stomach the alternative. Faced with the reality that his nose is clogged with snot, he also blows it, as demurely as he can, avoiding Dean’s eyes.

Dean is watching him. There’s a smile on his face. “You’re not real,” Castiel mutters. “There’s simply no way you’re real. This is a — the most vivid dream I’ve ever had, but it can’t possibly be real.”

Dean smiles wider. “You dream about me, Cas?”

“Yes,” says Castiel crossly, “but you’re usually wearing far less clothing.”

He expects Dean to laugh at him.

He doesn’t expect Dean’s eyes to widen, or for a heartbeat of silence to pass before he breathes, in a voice that scratches in his throat: “That could be arranged.”

Before Cas can process, though, he flinches. “I’m — sorry,” he says quickly. “Shit, that was outta line, I —”

And Cas is _sick_ of it.

Sick of being treated with kid gloves, by Dean and by himself; sick of being afraid of what he wants; sick of being timid. He’s been thinking about Dean naked more or less nonstop for the last two weeks, damnit, and the offer’s on the table, and he’s not going to let whatever stupid baggage he has get in the way.

“No,” he says. “Arrange it.”

Dean’s intake of breath is audible.

His pupils are blown wide as he stares at Cas, lips parted, and he swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing, silhouetted by the firelight. He doesn’t break eye contact as he reaches for the hem of his t-shirt, and a shudder runs through him as he pulls it over his head, from the chill or the intensity of Castiel’s gaze or both, Castiel doesn’t care.

He got a look at Dean’s bare chest earlier, explored it with his hands, but this — this is different. He’s muscled, yes — flawlessly so — but there’s just a bit of softness around his belly that makes Castiel want to touch it all the more, to run his tongue over the divots of his ribs —

“Do you,” says Dean, in an unsteady voice, “do you want me to keep going?”

“Yes,” Castiel breathes.

Dean toes off his boots and socks, then wobbles as he stands, barefoot, to unbutton his jeans. There’s nothing of performance in it, just Dean baring himself, awkwardly, deliberately, shuffling out of his jeans and then hesitating with his thumbs on the waistline of his boxer briefs. “Are you —”

“Everything,” says Cas, and props himself up on his elbows to watch.

Dean obeys. His arms have broken out in gooseflesh, but he shows no other sign of minding the cold, and when he at last pulls his underwear down over his thighs, his cock springs free, rigid and flushed and the most beautiful thing Castiel thinks he’s ever seen.

Dean steps free of his underwear. He’s standing there now, wholly revealed, face flushed bright in the firelight, and Cas almost wants to see how long he’ll wait there for him, how deep a blush will stain his cheeks, but instead he says, “Come here,” and when Dean does, he pulls him down for a kiss.

It’s a little awkward for a moment — Dean off-balance, stumbling — but they figure it out, and a moment later they’re kissing and Dean is on his knees, straddling Castiel’s hips, and Cas — well, he could hesitate, he could worry about the fact that he’s never done this before and doesn’t really know how to touch another man, but the fact is that he’s got the most attractive one he thinks he’s ever seen naked right there in his lap and he is _not_ going to keep his hands to himself. He runs one down Dean’s chest, tweaking experimentally at his nipple, and the other up his left high, marveling at the feel of the fine hair there, and Dean gasps and bucks against him and his gorgeous cock is _right there_ , so Castiel wraps his fingers around it and strokes down to the root.

“Mother of _Christ,”_ Dean chokes, which Cas takes to be a good thing. He kisses Dean’s neck, his shoulder, then down his chest, while he does it again. Dean makes a noise that’s practically a whimper, and it occurs to Cas that he could extract more noises — access more of Dean — if he got him laid out beneath him, and so he does.

One hand on Dean’s hip to guide him, the other propping himself up on the blanket, and Dean goes with him, falling onto his back with a gentle _oof_ of breath and staring up at Cas like he’s brighter than the stars.

“I sometimes imagine you in just your hat,” Castiel murmurs. “But this is good too.”

Dean’s eyes close as he shivers. His legs fall open, and Castiel takes the invitation, finding his cock again with one hand and reaching with the other to cup his balls, explore the crease between his thighs.

Dean arches against him, head tipping back, and his exposed throat gleams golden in the firelight. Cas reaches to kiss it just as his finger dips downward, toward the puckered little hole he’s never touched on anyone but himself, but Dean’s chin jerks violently, nearly clipping Cas’s forehead, and he draws back immediately.

“I’m sorry,” he says, searching Dean’s face. He still looks dazed with lust, still helplessly hard, but Cas realizes with an abrupt surge of guilt that Dean checked in with him constantly; that he hasn’t asked how far Dean is willing to go, what Dean wants —

“No,” Dean breathes, “I wanted it, just took me by surprise, just — please, Cas, don’t stop —”

His face is sweaty, half-wild with need, and Cas feels a surge of something warm that’s not really lust and not really power, and he kisses Dean again and murmurs into his lips, “I’m not going to stop,” and he slides down his body, kissing his chest, and Dean lets out a great sigh and goes boneless beneath him, gives himself up to Castiel’s touch.

When Cas returns his finger to where it was before, he murmurs, “Is this okay?”, and Dean doesn’t tense at all, just breathes out, “ _God,_ Cas, _please,_ ” and when Cas presses inward, lets out a sound that can only be described as a whine.

He doesn’t have lube, and it’s a slow fit, tight — he doesn’t want to hurt Dean. He pauses for a moment as he works his finger in to the first knuckle, watching Dean’s face, marveling at the way his fists clench in the blanket beneath him, at the way his chest heaves with a shuddering breath — and then he lowers his head and takes Dean’s cock in his mouth and buries it as deep as he can.

He’s never done this before. He has absolutely no practice, and no doubt his technique leaves miles to be desired, but Dean’s hips heave and he lets out an inarticulate cry and then: “ _Please,_ Cas, God, please, _please_ —”

Castiel doesn’t need telling twice. His finger slides deeper as he pulls off and sinks down again, and maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but it doesn’t really seem to matter when Dean’s writhing and cursing and then saying, “Cas, I’m —”

Cas pulls off and strokes him through it, once twice, and then Dean’s shuddering and shooting pearly come across his own belly, his chest, and Castiel thinks it might be the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

He cleans Dean up with his own bandana, and Dean protests weakly — “that’s got your snot on it, Cas, gross —” but gives it up. Instead, he pulls Cas down against him, still shivering with aftershocks, and mutters, “And you couldn’t believe _I_ was real, Jesus Christ.”

“Good?” Castiel asks, nosing against Dean’s cheek. It’s startling how easy it is, this intimacy; now naturally their bodies fall together.

“Good,” Dean sighs, and curls against him, drawing the remaining blankets over them both. “Sleep.”

It’s more than Castiel’s pleasure to comply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's song isn't overtly Canadian, but let's go with [Night Rider's Lament](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tADS_eWkG3A).


	5. Each Night Begins a New Day

It’s been a long time since Castiel’s shared a bed with someone. He’s never once shared a bedroll under an open, starry sky.

He wakes occasionally, unused to his circumstances: the sighing of the wind, a distant owl hooting, a cold foot he’s somehow thrust clear of the covers. At one point, he stirs to find Dean spooning him; the next, their positions are reversed, and Floss is tucked snugly on Dean’s other side, pinioning him between them. Castiel reaches to stroke her ears and sees a green arch across the northern sky, shifting gently like a curtain in the wind.

He means to lie and watch it for a while. He drifts off again, instead, and wakes next on his back, Dean still dead to the world and pinning his left arm, as Floss circles and resettles herself with her chin on Castiel’s hip. The sky above them is alive with silent fireworks, and it takes a moment for Castiel’s awe to compute that they’re real; that these are the northern lights in all their glory, brighter by far than he’s ever seen them from the city. They lance across the sky like missiles in some heavenly war: green-white and cold fire; rivers, walled cities, and spears.

The cold kisses Castiel’s cheeks and nose, but his body is warm. With his arm immobilized, there’s no way he can read his watch; no way he can measure the passage of time except in the ebb and flow of this strange imagined battle in the sky. Or maybe, he thinks, not a battle but a dance — one performed by a celestial being so immense that only the occasional flare of the fabric of her skirt clips the earth’s atmosphere and transforms the familiar heavens with streaming light. As fanciful metaphors go, this, he knows, is closer to the truth — the sun his cosmic dancer, its garment the solar wind.

He feels, distantly, that he should be worrying about what happens next. Whether Dean wants him for more than a night; whether this affects his relationship with Ellen Harvelle and his father’s concerns. He can’t find it in himself to be troubled. Instead, he watches the lights until his eyelids slip closed again, and when he opens them, it’s dawn.

He rolls over when Dean gets up, and grumbles at the sudden absence of a body’s worth of heat. The next he knows, there’s a pair of cold lips pressed to his forehead, and Dean saying, “Stay there. There’ll be coffee in a few.”

By the time Castiel’s sitting up and rubbing at his shivering arms, Dean’s balancing a mug of steaming coffee on the rock beside him and flipping sourdough pancakes on the rekindled campfire. Castiel bundles a blanket around his shoulders and sips gratefully.

“I hope you like it black,” says Dean over his shoulder. “Didn’t bring any milk.”

“Black is perfect,” says Castiel, amused. “Thank you for bringing coffee. Do you make a habit of planning overnight camping trips for people without telling them?”

Dean turns to grin at him. The sun’s rising behind him, white and blinding, and his face is silhouetted, washed out. “Nah,” he says. “Just you.”

Castiel’s stomach flips half-heartedly, as if it thinks his worry about the answer is probably excessive. “Is that —”

“Something I’d do again? _Fuck_ yeah,” says Dean. Then, more anxiously, deliberately casual: “You?”

Castiel feels a giddy laugh bubble out from his chest. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I — yes, of course, yes.”

Dean hands him a plate piled with pancakes and bacon. “So,” he says. “We goin’ steady now, or what?”

Castiel chews, making a show of considering. “Well,” he says, swallowing, “when a man offers another man sourdough pancakes —”

“I will hit you with this spatula,” Dean informs him.

Castiel looks down at his plate. Against his will, he considers the realities. “I can’t be out,” he says.

He can see the unhappiness settle into Dean’s limbs, and hates himself for being the cause. “Not even to my — to Ellen and Jo and Bobby?”

It’s a tempting idea. _Yes,_ Castiel almost says, _you know what, fuck it, yes,_ but he’s not built to throw that much caution to the winds. He thinks on it carefully as he eats another pancake.

Ellen is working on a drilling deal with his father. She’s also a masterful manager of people; she’d recognize that outing her business partner’s son to him is unlikely to serve her interests. Bobby and Jo aren’t likely to have the opportunity. Dean trusts them, regardless.

“You trust them,” he says out loud, to verify.

“With my life,” Dean answers immediately. Then, more hesitantly: “Asa would know too, probably. He lives with me. I — can’t say I’m as close to him, but he’s a good guy. Ellen trusts him. He knows I’m bi.”

“They’d really be okay with it? All of them? They won’t — think less of you, for —?” Castiel can’t quite find a word, so he just gestures comprehensively at himself.

“Well,” says Dean slowly, “even Bobby joined in making fun of my ‘little crush,’ these last two weeks, so that, uh — that ship has sailed.”

“Oh, God.” Castiel feels himself turn red. At Dean’s questioning look, he explains, “Jo, uh. I ran into her on campus, on Friday. She told me to — wear blue.”

The look on Dean’s face softens to something Castiel can’t name. He sets down his plate and steps around the fire to reach Castiel, turning his chin up gently for a kiss. “She was right,” he murmurs. “Not that it matters. I’d have been into you if you showed up in a damn toga.”

“ _Why?_ ” The question bursts out of Castiel before he can modulate it. “I mean — I’m sorry, you don’t have to answer that. I just — I’m just entirely inexperienced and ignorant, and while I recognize that I have some skills in the world, none of them are remotely relevant in this setting. From everything you know of me I’m barely more competent than a newborn, and you’re — and — I can’t shake the feeling that Ellen put you up to this somehow.” He shakes his head quickly at the look on Dean’s face. “I’m sorry.”

Dean’s jaw is tight, but he answers with careful calm. “Okay, first off, you better never say that fucking shit about Ellen again, all right? She’s not some fucking — God, she’s not a _pimp._ ”

Castiel’s intestines shrivel with shame. “I’m sorry. That was incredibly out of line. It’s just — she made kind of a point of telling me you rode that bull because she wanted you to.”

“Jesus _Christ._ ” Dean turns his face to the sky and paces a few feet away. He turns back, though, and says, “I wanted to ride the bull. Okay? Yeah, I probably wouldn’t have if Asa was doing it, but I — look. If your Ph.D. advisor wanted you to — analyze some data, or whatever, even though it wasn’t really your work, would you do it?”

Castiel blinks. “Yes.”

“And what if she asked you to sleep with her?”

He chokes on his coffee. “Dean, I’m _gay!_ ”

“And I’m not anyone’s fucking bitch boy! Okay?” He runs an angry hand through his hair, spiking it up on his scalp.

Castiel swallows. “I’m sorry,” he says, in a low voice. “I’m really sorry. I’m — so used to playing a part for my family’s sake, I — have maybe come to expect the same behavior in others.”

“Jesus _Christ,_ Cas,” says Dean, but he sounds more weary than angry. “I — look. You’re practically sex on legs. My dog likes you. Is it really _so_ hard to believe that I’d be here without —” He breaks off, shaking his head like there’s a sting in the unfinished thought. His mouth is tense and unhappy.

Castiel bows his head. “I’m sorry,” he says again, softly. Then: “I thought she was the ranch’s dog.”

Dean flips him off. “Shut up. Want more pancakes?”

\---

They make it back to the truck a little past noon. Descending the hill toward it, it’s hard for Castiel to believe they left it only yesterday; it seems like another lifetime. They give the horses a long drink from the river before loading them up, and when they’re done, Dean presses Cas back against the trailer and kisses him hard.

“I need to get you your own hat,” he tells him, when they break for air. “You look too damn good to not wear one. At all times.”

“It’s amazing to me,” Castiel mumbles through another kiss, “that you can both be a cowboy and have a cowboy kink. I didn’t know that was possible.”

“I’m efficient,” Dean tells him. Then, pulling back, seriously: “You good?”

Castiel swallows. “Yeah.” They’ve gone over it on the ride back, and settled on being out at the Walking L, and to Charlie; Dean seems, impossibly, to have forgiven Castiel for his earlier misstep. Castiel lets his gratitude hover in the back of his mind, too immense to look at full in the face.

Dean’s fingers curl inside the collar of Cas’s shirt, brushing his skin. “Listen, I — I’m riding in Marwayne, next weekend. Three days, I gotta drive up on Friday. It’s a ways. I don’t know —”

Castiel interrupts him. “Can I come?”

Dean stills. “It’s like a six hour drive, Cas.”

“I know,” says Cas, even though he doesn’t. “I’ll come. I can take Friday off. If — I mean, if you’d like that.”

“Christ. Of course I’d like it, Cas, you — are you sure?”

Castiel nods.

Dean laughs, a little shakily. “All right. I’ll — pick you up Friday morning, I guess.” He laughs again, and kisses him, then pulls back, straightening the collar of Castiel’s shirt.

“I could drive,” Castiel offers. “Not that I — it’s just, this truck —”

He falters at the horrified look Dean’s giving him. Then Dean throws his head back in a deep, unfettered laugh, and Castiel isn’t sure what he said that’s so funny, but he can’t help but grin back.

When Dean finally straightens, he leans close again, propping one arm on the metal next to Castiel’s head, near enough for his voice to brush physically over Castiel’s skin. “Trust me, sweetheart,” he says, eyes still sparking with laughter, in a register so deep that it _has_ to be intended to send shivers down Castiel’s spine. “You’re not gonna mind our ride.”

And then he straightens, grinning broadly, and walks backward to the door of the truck cab, watching Castiel try to recover his flustered senses all the way.

\---

Castiel leaves the Walking L after a few more stolen kisses, Dean’s thumb brushing dangerously over the inseam of his jeans, and a very awkward wave to Bobby Singer and Ellen Harvelle. Dean walks him to his car and holds the door for him, and Castiel wants to kiss him goodbye all over again. Instead, he flips him off through the window glass, and Dean roars with laughter and pats the top of the car as Cas rolls down his window. “See you Friday.”

“See you Friday,” Castiel echoes. Then, in a moment of daring, he reels Dean in for one final, quick brush of lips. Dean lingers a moment longer than he needs to, fingers tracing the angle of Castiel’s cheekbone, his jaw.

A whoop sounds from outside. Castiel starts, but Dean just closes his eyes with a look of long-suffering forbearance. “That’ll be Jo. You’d better get out of here while you can.”

Still, he doesn’t move immediately, but opens his eyes and runs a gentle thumb over Castiel’s lips. “Hey. See you Friday,” he says again, more quietly.

Castiel only nods, chest abruptly too full to speak. But Dean straightens, thumping the Nissan one more time, and hollers, “What you looking at, Harvelle?” across the yard.

Castiel takes his cue. As he’s pulling out, he can see Floss dancing toward Jo in his rearview mirror, and hear Dean yelling, “You _already_ met him, _twice,_ you tiny blonde menace —”

He doesn’t stop smiling until long after he reaches the highway.

\---

Castiel fills up on gas in Nanton, and checks his phone for the first time since he arrived at the ranch. There’s no service there, so he’s had it off, and when he turns it back on it buzzes continually for nearly two minutes before finally settling down to let him read his texts.

One of them is from his mother, earlier that day: _Your sister’s event went well._ No elaboration, no questions, just a simple exchange of information. All the rest are from Charlie.

_5/28/06, 7:12pm. How’d it go?_  
_5/28/06, 7:48pm. Cas?_  
_5/28/06, 9:33pm. Oh my God. You STAYED THE NIGHT._  
_5/28/06, 9:35pm. Either that or you’re still driving back in which case thank you for not replying but even THAT is big news._  
_5/28/06, 10:47pm. Okay you TOTALLY stayed the night. Cas!!_  
_5/28/06, 10:55pm. I’m going to bed but I HOPE YOU’RE NOT ;)_  
_5/29/06, 7:13am. Sooooo?_  
_5/29/06, 10:40am. WOW Cas._  
_5/29/06, 11:02am. I hope he wasn’t an ax murderer. This whole thread will be really embarrassing if you’ve been ax murdered._  
_5/29/06, 11:06am. But seriously lmk._

Castiel grins to himself, shaking his head. He types back: _Eh eh._

Then he slides back behind the driver’s seat and lets his phone buzz all the way home to Calgary.

\---

Dean is in his Excel spreadsheets.

Dean is in his morning bowl of cereal, and in the pattern of tail lights on his drive to work; in his cubicle, in his shower, in the line of nitrogen peaks coming off the mass spec. The Dean in his mind lingers over the weird fruit display at the grocery store and snarks back at Charlie’s chat-based insinuations and sinks down next to Castiel on the couch with a beer after a long day; he slides his legs around him so Castiel can lean back against his chest, and he dips his head to press a kiss to the skin behind his ear, and he lays him out on the sheets later, strips him down, puts his mouth all over him, and —

And, anyway. Castiel’s been thinking about Dean.

His officemate Hannah asks how it’s going that week, their first sociable exchange in a month; when he answers, startled, that he’s well, she smiles at him and tells him he looks happy. Rowena takes one look at him in their lab meeting on Tuesday and raises her eyebrows with a knowing smile; mercifully, she confines her comment to a broad Scots innuendo as he’s on his way out, to which he blushes and does not reply.

Dean calls on Tuesday evening.

Castiel’s just getting out of the shower, and he nearly trips as he lunges for the counter where he set his phone, just in case. They exchanged numbers before he left, though Dean warned him that he wouldn’t often have time to drive out to anywhere with service; Castiel can call the number at the ranch house if he needs to, but the prospect of talking with Ellen listening in is about as intimidating as the idea of being dumped in an arena with a bull. Maybe more intimidating, since Dean doesn’t seem eager to risk it himself.

“Hey,” he says breathlessly, pressing the phone to his ear. His skin is still damp and flushed from the shower, hair in wet curls that brush against the plastic, but through the mist on the mirror, he can see himself smiling so wide it almost hurts.

“Hey, Cas,” says Dean, and the low, staticky thrum of his voice makes Castiel want to sit down on the bathroom floor, weak-kneed; makes him want to laugh or shout or pump his fist with joy.

“Hey,” he says again, helpless, and he paces out of the bathroom, pressing his phone between ear and shoulder so he can wrap his towel around his waist as he goes. “How — how are you?”

“I’m doin’ good,” says Dean, and Cas can _hear_ his smile, can hear the wicked curl of amusement in his voice. “You all right there? I catch you in the middle of somethin’?”

The insinuation doesn’t pass him by, and it’s not inaccurate. Castiel musters his dignity, even though he’s flushing all over. “At the end of it, actually. I just got out of the shower.”

He hears Dean’s sharp intake of breath. “ _Christ,_ Cas.”

Somehow, the knowledge that Dean’s imagining him like that — eyes closed, cock in his hand, hair flattened to his head by the spray — makes him bold. “I was thinking of you.”

“ _Cas._ ” Dean’s voice is breathless, unsteady. “I can’t fuckin’ — I’m in the UTV, I can’t make a mess —”

“I think of you,” Castiel tells him, “ _constantly._ Your mouth, especially. Your hands.”

Dean groans.

“I don’t think I’ve had nearly enough time with your mouth. I’m looking forward to getting to know it more intimately.”

“ _Castiel._ I’m not kidding, Jesus, you gotta stop, I —” His voice sounds cracked open. “I gotta go help Bobby organize shit for branding after this, I can’t show up — fuckin’ —”

Castiel stills instantly. “I’m sorry, Dean.”

“Don’t be sorry,” says Dean. “Jesus _._ Just — hold that thought.”

“I will,” Castiel promises, and he hears Dean’s breath catch, but he means it earnestly. He glances out the window, where the glass walls of the skyscraper opposite his are painted fiery gold and red, reflecting the western sky. “Is it sunset there?”

“Yeah,” says Dean, still shaky. “It’s — a nice one, Cas.” After a moment, he continues, “I’m at the spot I took you that first day, on the hill. The river’s down a little. Can see everything from here.”

“I remember,” Castiel tells him. “You can’t, from here. My windows face north. But I can see it in the building across the street. It’s all glass, top to bottom. Like a giant mirror.”

“That sounds like somethin’.”

“I’d rather be with you.”

“Yeah,” breathes Dean. “Yeah, me too.” His voice changes, suddenly, as if he’s shaken himself out of a trance. “Hey. We still on for Friday?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Castiel tells him.

“Great,” says Dean. “Hang on, can you tell me your address?”

He recites it, and hears Dean fumble with paper and pen. “I’ll be there ‘round eight, probably, but I’ll let you know when I’m on the road.”

“Only if you’re stopped for gas,” Castiel tells him, struck suddenly, piercingly, by Charlie’s old fears. “Don’t — don’t text while you’re driving for me, okay? Or call. I’ll be here. Just —” He closes his eyes. He’s not sure why this is something he so viscerally, suddenly needs; he makes phone calls behind the wheel all the time. So do his parents, his siblings. He never worries about any of them.

He’s about to open his mouth, to apologize for being ridiculous, when Dean says, softly, “Yeah, you got it, Cas.” Then, after a short pause: “Thanks for asking.”

“Thank you,” answers Cas, trying not to sound choked up, but trembling with relief. “God, I — I’m sorry, I’m not usually like this.”

“You don’t gotta explain,” says Dean, and there’s a warmth in his voice that Cas is positive he doesn’t deserve. “Like I said. Thanks.”

They hang up not long after that, but Castiel stands there for a time, holding his phone, bare skin growing increasingly chilled in his air-conditioned apartment. The reflected clouds have faded to a bruised blue and mauve, evening sky pale in the gaps between them. He hears distant honking from the street below, sirens.

Suddenly, he remembers the feeling in his chest, the first time Charlie asked him sharply, pale-faced, if next time he could stay off the phone with her while he drives. The strange, lump-in-his-throat wonder of it: that _he_ would be a person who could hurt her if he died. That she would worry about _him._

He still feels guilty. He’s got nothing like Charlie’s history; no right to impose edicts for his own emotional well-being. But maybe, he thinks — maybe, that’s how Dean felt. And if it is, Castiel can’t say he’d take it back if he could.

\---

Castiel packs his bag on Thursday night. Clothes, the book he’s been reading. He checks that his toiletry bag will fit, then takes it out again so he can brush his teeth in the morning. Heart thudding, he tucks condoms and lube into the side pocket of his bag. _Just in case,_ he thinks.

_You’re kidding, right?_ says another part of his brain. _You think you’re gonna share a hotel room with this guy for two nights and NOT bone?_

“I don’t want to presume,” he tells it, primly, out loud.

_The dude nearly lost his shit when you told him you were fantasizing about him in the shower._

The voice in his head sounds alarmingly like Charlie, whose attitude toward the whole affair has swung between lecherous exuberance and cautious concern. _Don’t let him pressure you,_ she’s said, and _if he’s not willing to wait until you’re comfortable, then he’s not good enough for you,_ until Castiel finally snapped, wearing thin, “Charlie, if our first night together is anything to go by, _I’m_ more likely to put too much pressure on _him._ Besides, he’ll be riding horses that are basically demons of hellfire all three days. He might not want to do anything else.”

Charlie had been silent for several seconds, then responded, in a small voice, “I’m sorry. I’m just — really freaking proud of you, but this is also happening so fast, and after years of encouraging you to put yourself out there — and I mean _years,_ Castiel — I guess I never really thought about, what if you actually did? And now —” She’d laughed self-consciously. “I guess I keep thinking of you like a baby bird leaving the nest, and getting scared I haven’t prepared you properly, like if you — raised a kid to adulthood and then suddenly realized you totally forgot to tell them about _taxes,_ or that you need to get health insurance.”

“I live in Canada,” Cas had reminded her. “I get free health insurance.”

“Well bully for you,” Charlie griped, and the conversation had devolved quickly from there. Still, as he stands there with his hands resting on the lid of his suitcase, Castiel thinks she might have had a point; so far, his and Dean’s mutual attraction seems to have stood the test of his various hangups and wealth of inexperience, but it seems insane to expect that the streak won’t run out sooner or later; that Dean won’t get his head together and realize how much better he could do.

It seemed so easy, out on the ranch, the future spilling boundless in all directions. Now — he shakes his head.

He’ll worry about that if it comes to it. For now, he should get some rest; Dean is coming in the morning.

He sleeps fitfully, waking at odd hours to check his phone, as if Dean will somehow have already left at three in the morning, four. Finally, around four thirty, he drops off into a deeper sleep, and is only awoken after seven by a buzz next to his ear.

It’s from Dean. _Stopped 4 coffee. See u soon._

Castiel showers in a haste — he’d meant to wake up at 6:30, but must have missed his alarm — and double-checks his bag before zipping it up. His watch says 7:49. He paces back and forth restlessly, then forces himself to slow down; he doesn’t want to be all sweaty when he goes down to meet Dean. He could just take the elevator down now. He presses the button to illuminate his phone’s screen; still nothing. He realizes, abruptly, that he forgot to pack his charger.

He’s just returning from his bedroom and stuffing the cord into his suitcase’s front pocket when his phone starts to buzz. Heart leaping, Castiel grabs it from the table. It’s a text, from Dean, one word: _Outside._

His heart thunders for the whole ride down to the lobby, palm sweaty on the handle of his bag. Then the doors open, and he starts across the wide slate flagstones, suitcase wheels skidding at his jerky gait, and he sees him, through the plate glass doors.

Dean’s wearing a battered leather jacket, collar pulled up behind his ears. He’s standing on the curb, arms crossed, leaning casually back against his car.

And — the _car._ It’s long and black and gleaming, utterly spotless; one of those old-school muscle cars Cas has always been kind of in awe of but never knew more than the first thing about. It looks powerful, sleek and haughty, like it wouldn’t even deign to notice the surrounding sea of Honda Civics and minivans.

When he steps outside, he can hear that it’s running, engine purring low. The windows are open, and out of them thuds the sound of rock music: AC/DC, Castiel thinks.

Dean is grinning, so wide it’s more endearing than provocative. He’s clearly arranged himself to make an impression. Castiel shakes his head helplessly, a smile tugging at his own mouth.

He wishes he could kiss Dean — back him right up against this ridiculous, beautiful car, slide a thigh between his legs, and show him exactly how well his absurd automotive seduction has worked. Instead, he cocks his head and asks, “Are you gonna stand there all day, or are we going to a rodeo?”

Dean laughs, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and holds open Castiel’s door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't forget the classics: Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson, [Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RePtDvh4Yq4).


	6. Short Native Grasses

“How did you get her so clean, anyway?” Castiel asks, an hour or so later, sailing north along the highway. Outside, the prairie is growing browner and more desolate, the mountains fading in the rearview mirror. “I know for a fact that your driveway is a literal tunnel of dust.” 

He’s already learned that the car is a 1967 Chevrolet Impala; that Dean calls her Baby; that she is, unequivocally, a she; that he got her from his dad when he was eighteen years old. He’s also been told — and promptly forgotten — all about her engine specifications, horsepower, the date she rolled off the line. 

Now, Dean looks ever so slightly abashed. “I told you I made a stop.”

“You — you washed your car.” Castiel stares at him, incredulous. “On the way to come get me. You actually _washed_ your _car._ ”

The tips of Dean’s ears are pink. He stares straight ahead at the road.

Castiel dissolves into laughter.

“You —” he wheezes. “I can’t believe I was worried. You’ve clearly — between me and the car, for one of us at least, you’ve clearly got it _bad._ ” And he loses it again, crumpling forward in helpless laughter.

“Hey.” Dean points at him warningly, which only makes Castiel laugh harder. “She needed washing anyway, you —” But he’s cut off by a fresh peal from Cas, and after a moment, finds an empty cassette box on the seat between them and throws it deftly at his head.

“ _Ow,_ ” says Cas, even though it doesn’t really hurt. He retrieves the box from the floor and takes the opportunity to rifle through Dean’s tapes — apparently, his primary mode of listening to music. They’ve currently moved from AC/DC on to Led Zeppelin, and his collection includes a wealth of classic rock alongside a smattering of the country fare Cas might expect: Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Chris LeDoux.

“What’s your favorite cowboy song?” he asks, curious; it seems like the kind of thing Dean would have an opinion on.

Dean cracks his neck without taking his eyes from the road. “Amarillo by Morning. Or Ghost Riders.”

Castiel flips quickly from one cassette to the next. They’re labeled in swift, blocky capitals, on peeling labels. “What album?”

“Uh.” Dean glances sidelong at the box. “There’s a — should be one in there labeled Road Songs. Amarillo’s on there.”

Castiel finds it after a moment’s searching. “Your taste in music seems well suited to road songs,” he observes, and waits for the Zeppelin song to finish before changing out the tapes.

Dean shrugs. “Lotta time driving,” he says.

They lapse into silence, and when Cas slides the new tape into the Impala’s deck, he’s greeted by a lonesome-sounding fiddle, then George Strait crooning:

_Amarillo by morning, up from San Antone_

_Everything that I’ve got is just what I’ve got on…_

He sounds at peace, but pared down to it; like he’s had to choose his way of life over all other possible desires. “Is it really that lonely?” Castiel asks, as the lyrics enumerate lost loves and material possessions. “He makes it sound like he does nothing but travel from one rodeo to the next.”

Dean hesitates, then shifts his head equivocally. “Canadian circuit’s smaller. And I don’t ride every week.”

Castiel considers this. It seems rude to ask why not, when he can easily imagine: the demands of Dean’s job at the ranch, the exhaustion of life on the road. He wonders how the economics work out — if Dean would make more money on the rodeo circuit full-time. “Would you want to?”

“I’d have to quit Ellen’s.” Dean says it lightly, as if acknowledging the idea costs him nothing, but he seems somehow drawn in on himself all the same. George Strait sings, _I ain’t got a dime, but what I got is mine — I ain’t rich, but Lord, I’m free…_

“I’m sorry,” says Cas, regretting his curiosity. “I don’t mean to pry.”

“It’s —” Dean huffs out a tense breath as the song fades. “Some of the guys, they got a place to come back to, right? Lot of ‘em are from old ranching families. They’ll take over when their dads age out. I don’t —”

He cuts himself off, but Castiel thinks he understands. “You don’t think you’d deserve a place at the Walking L. If you didn’t put in the work.”

Dean snorts. There’s no humor to it; his shoulders are rigid, defensive, and Castiel wishes he could take this entire conversation back. The song has switched to something pounding and empty — Metallica, maybe. Cas twists his hands in his lap. “Good things do happen, Dean,” he says, quietly, but his words are half-swallowed by the lick of a ravenous chord.

He thinks, for a moment, Dean hasn’t heard him. He shows no sign of it; doesn’t flick his eyes in Castiel’s direction. Then he says, in a tone even more expressionless than his face, “Not in my experience.”

\---

The awkwardness between them still hasn’t fully thawed when they reach Marwayne, hours later. They’ve papered over it well enough, bickering over road snacks and speculating on draws. This is Dean’s department, and as they drive, he regales Castiel with the entertaining — and occasionally alarming — histories of the broncs he might have a chance to ride. Castiel learns that the Coconut mother-son pair won’t be here, but that there’s a number of other horses Dean’s been itching to try his luck on.

There’s a tense moment when they check into the hotel — Castiel offers to pay, and Dean’s jaw tightens, but he accepts a split halfway — and then they’re in their room, a little threadbare but clean, and at long last they’re stationary, and alone.

This is the moment they've been waiting for since that phone conversation on Tuesday; since before that, even. Castiel’s heart rabbits in his chest. He asks, “Do you — need to get down to the arena?” It’s still several hours until the rodeo starts, but he doesn’t want to presume. 

Dean is watching him, with something dark in his eyes, but the lopsided smile on his face looks real. He drops his bag on the nearest bed — something in it jingles — and moves toward Castiel, slowly, evaluating.

“I need,” he says, “to find out how well you been holding that thought.”

He stops just a foot away, holding Castiel’s gaze. Irresistibly, Cas’s eyes dart down to his mouth, and then he can’t look away. He feels in some distant part of himself that he shouldn’t let Dean solve the tension between them with sex; then again, it’s hard to think of anything more incredible than the notion that they could _solve_ something with _sex._ It feels like cheating. It feels like it shouldn’t work. “I’m very good at taking direction,” he says.

Dean huffs out a laugh, and it ghosts across Castiel’s face. He draws closer — comes to a stop so near that every inch of Castiel’s body is tingling with awareness of the proximity, so near that their breath tangles in the gap between their lips. “That’s a lie,” he says, and brings their mouths together.

Castiel groans into the kiss, his body straining at once for Dean’s touch, and when Dean laughs again he swallows it, fisting his hands in Dean’s shirt, hauling him close. Dean lets him, falling into Castiel as he pulls his shirt free of his jeans and slides his hands underneath it. He stills when Castiel drops his head to scrape his teeth over the pulse in his neck, but is moving again a moment later as Cas returns to his mouth, too fixated to stay away for long. Somehow, despite the tight press of their bodies, Dean’s hand slips down between their bodies to Castiel’s belt, deftly unbuckling it and thumbing open the button to his jeans, and he’s nearly got Castiel’s fly unzipped before Castiel manages to catch his wrist in one hand.

Dean stops instantly. “Is this —”

“Want to do something for you,” Castiel tells him. He can’t stop himself from biting at Dean’s lips as he says it, because they’re close and full and spit-slick and perfect. “Want to — don’t want to just take and take —”

And Dean leans into his kiss, slides his tongue deep past Castiel’s in a way that makes his knees shake, and breaks free, panting, to say, “Know what I — been wanting you in the shower, ever since —”

“ _Yes,_ ” says Castiel, and they fumble their way there, unwilling to step too far apart, half tangled in their own clothes.

In front of the mirror, Dean pushes Castiel’s shirt off his shoulders, murmurs, “ _Look,_ ” and buries his face hot in Castiel’s neck. He kisses his way down his chest, and Castiel looks because he can’t help himself — sees his own skin flushed pink and shining where Dean’s mouth has been, the color high on his cheekbones, his hair dark and messy. He looks _good,_ and the thought wrenches a gasp from him just as Dean reaches the waistband of his underwear, darts his tongue quickly beneath it. He grips Castiel’s hips to keep them from bucking forward, though, and grins up at him, wickedly. “Shower?”

“ _Damn_ you,” Castiel says, and pushes Dean back far enough to scramble out of the rest of his clothes in peace.

Dean rises to follow suit, and moves behind Castiel as he fumbles with the shower dial, fingertips brushing his hips. Castiel bends further to test the water temperature, and suddenly the erect length of Dean’s cock is brushing his bare ass, and they both startle, Castiel gasping, Dean lurching hastily back. “Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean —”

“Later,” says Castiel, because if he wasn’t sold on the notion before, he is now. Still, he knows that Dean has to ride in a few hours; that their first time shouldn’t be with one eye on a ticking clock.

The water’s warmed to the perfect temperature. He switches it to shower and turns to find Dean staring at him, eyes huge in his face.

“You want —?” he says.

The naked shock in his voice sends something warm and painful tendriling through Castiel’s belly. “I want,” he breathes, stepping away from the shower to take Dean by the hips. His hair is damp, beaded with water where the shower spray caught it briefly, and droplets roll from his hands onto Dean’s skin. He kisses him gently. “When we have time. If you’d like to. I want.”

Dean’s breath hitches. He kisses Castiel back, and crowds him, stumbling, to the edge of the tub, then over it into the spray. Dean makes an urgent, needy noise in his throat and kisses Castiel harder, pressing him back so the water soaks his hair and sluices down his chest. He drops his head to follow its path down, further, until he’s sinking to his knees, and the water drums in Castiel’s ears and he runs his nails through Dean’s hair until he’s cradling his skull, fingers spread, and that’s when Dean’s mouth slides down over his cock and Castiel all but screams.

Dean pulls almost off, giving Castiel a questioning look through the water streaming over his face, and Castiel nearly sobs and babbles, “Yes, _please,_ don’t stop, Jesus, Dean, I —”

But it’s enough. Dean closes his eyes and sinks back onto him, and Castiel is lost to all rational thought, his entire world narrowed down to the wet-hot velvet slide of Dean’s mouth, impossibly perfect, a thousand times anything he’s ever imagined. He’s distantly aware that he’s still talking, incoherent praise and blasphemy pouring from his lips, and that Dean’s hand is on his own cock, which some long-lost part of Castiel wants to object to, wants to view as his own responsibility, but who is he kidding? He’s far too far gone to do anything but ride this out.

He tries to warn Dean when he’s close, but Dean ignores him, sinks down even deeper than before, so Castiel’s cock is nudging the back of his throat, and he makes a strangled noise when Castiel bucks uncontrollably into him, but it’s too late, he’s coming, ears roaring and white filling his vision, and it’s only when he’s recovering, staggering to rest his weight against the shower wall, and Dean is coughing and spitting at his feet, that he looks down and realizes that Dean’s come, too.

“Sorry,” Dean croaks. “I should’ve — got carried away. I sort of assumed you’re clean.”

“I am.” Despite his own unsteady legs, Castiel reaches down to take Dean’s hand, drawing him to his feet. “But I can show you results.”

“Same,” mumbles Dean — mumbles, because Castiel is kissing him, drawing their chests together, still slick under the slightly cooling spray. Their cocks, now limp, bump awkwardly with the nearness, but it doesn’t feel _bad,_ so Castiel draws Dean closer still, startling a laugh out of him.

“God,” he breathes, “you’re — somethin’ else.”

“In a good way?” Castiel kisses him before he can answer, deep and thorough, tasting himself on Dean’s tongue.

“ _Yeah,_ ” Dean breathes when they break apart, “yeah, but dude, if you’re not trying to find out if I can still make a go at round two, we’d better get dressed.”

Castiel acquiesces grudgingly — more because he’s aware of the demands on Dean’s time than because he actually wants to — and watches Dean dry himself off, rubbing vigorously at his hair before wrapping the towel around his waist. “Dude,” he scowls when he sees Castiel watching, “that’s creepy.”

“And everything else we’ve done isn’t?” Castiel inquires, but Dean is grinning as he flips him off and lets himself out of the bathroom, a cloud of steam hounding him as he goes.

Castiel follows, towel-clad himself, and reclines on the bed to watch Dean get dressed. He does so with an air of deliberate indifference to Castiel’s gaze, but when he pulls on a pair of tight spandex athletic shorts, Castiel bursts out laughing.

Dean shoots him a death glare. “Look, do you want the parts in working order or not?”

“Yes please,” Castiel cackles, breathless. “But haven’t you — ever heard of a cup?”

“Yeah,” huffs Dean, “and trust me, you do _not_ want one on on the back of a bronco.” He turns away, ridiculous in his shorts, and bends to retrieve his jeans.

“Sorry,” Castiel manages through another impending gale of laughter. “Sorry, it’s just — you all look so timeless and _Western_ in your Wranglers and cowboy hats, and to think that underneath it you’re wearing —” He gestures helplessly, curling up on his side.

“I’m ignoring you,” Dean tells him with dignity, tightening his belt buckle. He retrieves his shirt next, and Castiel sobers mostly in order to not miss an inch of bare skin before it’s covered again. Then come the boots and the hat, placed with care, and Dean checks his bag for the rest of his gear: chaps, spurs, rigging, gloves, tape.

“You’re gonna have to get dressed too, you know,” he tells Castiel. “‘Less you wanna walk.”

Castiel scrambles to comply.

\---

Dean wins.

Well — he wins the day, comes away with an eighty-eight, a half-point lead on Cody Traister. He’s got two more rides for his shot at the champion’s purse, and his casual nonchalance at the prospect of going into them with a lead strikes Castiel as an underreaction.

He’s a little surprised at his own sudden, rabidly partisan enthusiasm. Not that he would expect to root _against_ Dean — it’s just that, from everything he knows of himself, he should be more likely to spend those eight seconds biting his fingernails with worry; the impulse he suppresses should be to squeeze his eyes tight shut, not to leap from his seat and whoop for the entire stadium to hear. And yet here he is, still flushed and triumphant, blood still buzzing with the exhilarating image of Dean whirling on the back of a wild bay mare, even after hours have passed, and the rest of the evening’s events, and Dean’s watching him with cool amusement from his seat in the hotel room’s only chair.

He’s got his shirt unbuttoned and half off his body, and is carefully removing the swaths of athletic tape he must have wrapped around his right arm in the time since he left Castiel to find a seat in the rodeo stands. He flexes his wrist carefully as he works, in a way that suggests it must be tender, and Castiel itches to help somehow, but he doesn’t know what to do.

“Does it leave you sore?” he asks, remembering how he hobbled around for the first few days after his and Dean’s weekend ride. But Dean doesn’t answer, just raises his eyebrows at Cas with a slow smile that says, as clearly as words ever could, _Not too sore for you._

Castiel blushes. But when Dean finishes stripping off the tape, when he gets to his feet and pads over to the bed shirtless, bare-footed on the linoleum floor, he stops there and pauses, taking in the way Castiel’s looking up at him with an unreadable face.

Castiel feels a tug of uncertainty in his chest. “Dean?”

He sees Dean swallow. “What you said earlier,” he says, and his voice comes out rough. “You should know — we don’t have to. Not now, or — ever. Unless you want to. Or I can —”

Dizzy warmth surges through Castiel’s chest. He tips his head back, drawing Dean down for a kiss. “Do you want to?”

Dean stills, not letting Castiel pull him farther down onto the bed. His voice is careful, almost trembling, when he says, “Do you?”

“Yes,” says Castiel. He kisses Dean again, again. “Yes. I brought stuff. _Yes._ ”

This time, when he draws Dean toward him, he follows.

\---

Afterward, they lie together in a haze of stupefied contentment, sweaty where they’re entangled despite the chill of the room’s air conditioner. Castiel’s ass feels weird and loose, slick with lube, aching in a way he kind of hopes will last; Dean’s still tracing arcs over his ribs with his fingers and murmuring into his hair, the way he did as Castiel came down from his orgasm, chest heaving and heart pounding and brain leaking out through his ears.

“You okay?” Dean asks him, for what’s at least the third time. His hand doesn’t stop moving as he says it, as if Castiel’s body is a precious, breakable thing; as if he has to make sure it’s all there.

Castiel rolls over and bites his shoulder, gently. “I _said_ yes.”

He feels Dean’s laugh more than hears it. He likes it, so he presses closer, admiring the freckles on Dean’s collarbone from less than inch away, and Dean says, “I’ve never done that before.”

His tone is wondering, and it slips from his mouth as if he doesn’t quite mean it to, and Castiel stills. He raises his head, frowning. “What do you mean?”

Dean lifts his own head slightly to look at Cas, out of focus; from this angle, he’s got almost the beginnings of a double chin. Castiel finds it kind of adorable, and wants to kiss it, so he does; a tiny spasm of tension passes through Dean’s hand where it’s splayed at the small of Castiel’s back, and he says, “I mean, I — I’ve only ever bottomed for guys before. Figured that was what I liked.”

Castiel feels his frown deepen. He props himself up on both elbows to study Dean. “Did you want that? Was it okay?”

Dean laughs, and reaches to kiss Castiel. “Don’t be a dumbass, Cas. That was _awesome._ ” He huffs out a breath through his grin, dropping his head back to the pillow. “I mean. It’s just not what I was expecting. You seem pretty — toppy,” he says.

Castiel hasn’t thought about it like that before. He feels weirdly resentful of the other men Dean’s been with; of the easy way he can compare past experiences, find Castiel’s place among them. “Is that a bad thing?”

“ _Fuck_ no.” Dean chokes out an incredulous laugh, but he’s smiling as he twines his fingers with Castiel’s, pulling him closer. “Shit, sweetheart. It’s a good thing. It’s _all_ good things. However you want me, I’m yours.”

\---

They peel themselves out of bed not long afterward, and go to find a bar that’s still serving food. Castiel ate at the rodeo, but he’s starving all the same; once he gets his burger, he doesn’t pause until he’s licking the last of the barbeque sauce from his fingers, and catches Dean watching him, eyes dancing, as he dunks a pair of fries in his gravy.

Castiel flips him off stickily, and Dean moves as if to catch his hand in his own. He abruptly aborts the gesture as a voice calls from the other side of the bar, “Hey Winchester, there you are!”

It’s two of the other cowboys. Dean’s eyes widen slightly, and he gives Castiel an apologetic look, but that’s all there’s time for before there are hands clapping him on the back, and introductions — _this is my friend Cas_ is all Dean says — and invitations to join them at the pool table across the bar.

“Nah, I think we’re good,” Dean starts to say, but the other cowboy grips his shoulder and gives it a shake, grinning over at Cas to say, “Dean sucks at pool, c’mon man, you gotta cheer Dustin up after his shit day. Let him beat you at _something_ at least!”

The third cuffs him across the head, none too gently. He turns a smile on Cas and says, “Wanna ditch these idiots for a round of darts?”

“I’m rather good at darts,” Castiel answers, because he is. He and Charlie used to play in her dorm room, a massive triple she’d somehow hoodwinked the housing lottery into restricting to one occupant. He became quite proficient, with practice.

The cowboy roars with laughter. “You’re on!” And before Castiel can object, he’s being drawn over to the dart board, barely snagging his beer as he goes. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see that Dean’s wound up at the pool table. Indeed, his share of balls on the table — solids, Castiel thinks — seems to grow as the game wears on, the other cowboy looking more and more pleased with himself.

All the same, Castiel finds his eyes drawn to Dean as he bends over the table, carefully positioning his cue. He does it gracefully, for all that he’s losing. He doesn’t look inexperienced.

“Hey,” says the cowboy Cas is playing darts with — Dustin. “You gonna take your turn, or you just gonna stare at your boyfriend’s ass all night?”

Castiel turns to blink at him. He’s leading by a good margin, and there’s suddenly an ugly slant to Dustin’s mouth. He isn’t sure if this is a run-of-the-mill homophobic comment — he’s encountered plenty of those in his life — or something more. He wonders if he should give ground. Avoid trouble.

He doesn’t really feel like it. He retrieves the darts from the board, returns to the line, and focuses. He has 158 points, and he needs to hit zero exactly. Or maybe not — Dustin never said what rules they were playing by — but Castiel and Charlie always stuck to the professional standard.

Treble 20. He hits it. “Ninety-eight,” he says, out loud, and aims his next dart without glancing at Dustin. Treble 16. “Fifty.”

All he needs is the bullseye. He weighs the last dart carefully in his hand, and flicks his wrist. It sinks with a thud into the black dot at the center of the board.

Castiel turns to face Dustin. He’s taller than the cowboy, if not as burly. “Good game,” he says, extending his hand to shake.

Dustin grips it hard, but Castiel doesn’t let himself flinch. “Good game,” he returns, grudgingly.

Then Dean is there, hand ghosting briefly across Castiel’s back before the contact disappears. “Hey, I’m beat. See you boys tomorrow?”

“Count on it, Winchester,” says Dustin, and Castiel thinks it’s meant to sound friendly enough, but there’s something that puts him on edge about the way Dustin’s grin bares his teeth.

Back in the Impala, on their way to the hotel, he’s still trying to formulate a way to ask about it when Dean asks, “Did Brodie give you trouble?”

It takes Cas a moment to remember that Brodie is the cowboy’s last name. “Not really,” he says. “I beat him.”

That draws a breath of laughter from Dean. “I noticed. I, uh.” He seems unsure of what to say next. “Look, if this is too much — I mean, the guys seeing you out with me — we can find another way. But I don’t think any of the others will take much note of it. Straight guys seeing what they expect to and all that.”

His tone is deliberately casual, but his fingers are tight on the steering wheel. Castiel watches him closely, trying to figure out what he’s missing. “And Dustin?”

Dean doesn’t flinch. “We fucked once.”

Castiel blinks. “I see.”

That means, of course — knowing what Castiel now knows — that Dustin fucked _him._ It shouldn’t matter, but somehow it does, and Castiel sifts carefully through his emotions, trying to evaluate why. It’s not that he’s jealous — not exactly. It’s more that he keeps thinking about Dusty’s grip, hard on his own, and about that same hand on Dean’s body.

He doesn’t want it there. He doesn’t want — the thing they just did — for _anyone_ like that; can’t imagine getting through the prep and the slow opening up and the chest-tightening intimacy with a partner that impatient and entitled. Maybe Dustin’s different in bed. Somehow, he doesn’t think so.

Dean makes a strangled noise of frustration, startling Castiel out of his thoughts. “Jesus, Cas, say something.”

Castiel hadn’t realized he’d made Dean uncomfortable. “I have a hard time imagining that that was a pleasant experience,” he admits.

There’s a beat of utter silence. Then Dean lets out a great snort of laughter, clapping one hand on the steering wheel. It takes a moment for him to recover. When he does, he reaches his right hand for Castiel’s left, and squeezes it tightly. “It really wasn’t,” he says.

It’s past midnight by the time they stumble back into their room, but after the forced separation at the bar, Castiel wants nothing more than to touch, to possess. His hands are all over Dean from the moment they’ve stepped into the room, and when Dean mumbles into his mouth, “I need a _shower,_ Jesus,” Castiel takes that as his cue. He shepherds Dean into the bathroom and strips him of his clothes, lips chasing hands, as if he could exorcise anyone else’s touch; he runs soapy hands over the planes of Dean’s body and kneads shampoo into his hair, and Dean shudders, pliant under his touch.

Neither of them is up for another round, not really, but they curl up naked in bed together, skin still damp and heated from the shower, Dean’s ass snug to Castiel’s hips. Castiel brushes his fingers up Dean’s belly and spreads them flat across his chest, and when he kisses the knobs of vertebrae down the back of Dean’s neck, Dean lets out a little sigh, contented and unguarded, and relaxes further into Castiel’s arms.

Castiel takes the sound of it with him into his dreams.

\---

They’re still lying like that when he wakes, Dean still and warm against his chest. There’s white sunlight slanting in through the hotel room blinds, and a stripe of it falls across Dean’s face: eyes closed, lips half-parted with sleep. Castiel kisses behind his ear, and Dean stirs, settles closer against him, making Castiel suddenly and intimately aware of his morning erection.

Dean clearly notices, too, because he arches backward, languid, pressing his bare ass flush to the length of Castiel’s cock. Castiel’s breath hitches, and his hand tightens unconsciously on Dean’s hip. Dean arches his neck and cranes backward to capture Castiel’s mouth in a kiss.

They both have morning breath. Castiel doesn’t care. He kisses Dean deeply, using one hand to hold his jaw at an angle he can reach; when he releases him, Dean sinks back against him, one leg splaying open across Castiel’s hips. Castiel takes the invitation, and runs his hand down the inside of Dean’s thigh, cups his balls, rolls them gently with his thumb.

Dean gasp-stutters against him, falling back further, boneless, and Castiel cracks. He surges off the mattress to cover Dean’s body and mouth with his own, and somehow Dean’s legs fall open for him and Castiel is kneeling between them, one hand still caressing him there, the other running over his chest, his arms, guiding them both to rest on the pillow above his head and pinning them there with a brief, hard squeeze to both wrists.

Dean whines in his throat and writhes, and Castiel bends to kiss his chest, run a tongue over his nipple, then bite it, swiftly, immediately replacing the pain with a soothing kiss. Dean cries out, throwing his head back, and Castiel sits up to admire his handiwork: Dean spread out beneath him, flushed and needy and helplessly hard. He’s kept his arms where Castiel left them, wrists crossed above his head, and his eyes are closed, face tipped up and back, the column of his throat bare and vulnerable. Castiel reaches to run his hand up it, light and possessive, cupped between thumb and palm.

Dean freezes.

His legs lock sudden and iron on either side of Castiel’s hips. His eyes fly open, and the look in them is naked fear.

Castiel releases him instantly, reeling back in shock. He can’t retreat all the way, though, because Dean’s legs are holding him in place, and an instant later Dean is following him, kissing him, running encouraging hands down his sides as if to say _It’s nothing, come back, you imagined it, come back to bed —_

It’s not nothing. “Dean, _stop,”_ Castiel says.

Dean stills instantly. It takes him a moment longer to release his leghold on Castiel’s hips, but when he does, Cas staggers back off the bed, nearly tripping over the covers as he goes.

From a safe distance, he stares at Dean, heart thudding wild in his chest. He’s sitting awkwardly now in the middle of the bed, knees up to his chest, face flushed and beginning to twist with anger. “ _What?_ ” he demands.

Castiel thinks he might cry. “What’s wrong?” he asks, voice trembling and small, even though it’s obvious; even though he’s just terrified Dean with a hand at his throat, even though other tiny moments are beginning to slot into place, the frisson that runs through Dean when Castiel kisses his neck; the way his chin jerks down, protective, not encouraging; that first time, by the campfire —

“Nothing’s wrong,” snaps Dean. “Jesus Christ, just —”

“You can’t tell me nothing’s wrong,” Castiel interrupts him, more quietly.

Dean’s mouth hangs open for a moment, and then he snaps it closed. A deeper flush stains his cheeks now, and underneath his anger, he looks dangerously close to tears. “Fine,” he says roughly, and then he’s rolling off the bed and jerking his jeans up over his hips, buckling his belt so quickly the leather slaps, angry, against his arm. He grabs a T-shirt and storms past Castiel before he has time to react.

He’s still pulling it over his head as he slams the door.

\---

It takes Castiel a moment to recover his shattered nerves. Then he scrambles for his own shirt and pants, pulls them on, and jams his feet, sockless, into his shoes. He makes sure to grab the room key before he leaves — he doesn’t want to be locked out — and it occurs to him how obvious it must be what he’s been doing, should anyone pass by. How little he’d care if his own father were standing in the hotel corridor right now, compared to his worry for Dean.

The corridor is empty. Castiel glances wildly up and down it, then half-runs for the stairs, clattering down them to the parking lot below.

But Dean’s not there, and the Impala is still parked in its space. Castiel pivots on his heel, scanning his surroundings, but there’s no sign of Dean anywhere.

He didn’t put on his shoes before leaving the hotel room. He might have walked off somewhere anyway, if he was upset enough, but there’s another direction Castiel hasn’t tried yet.

He’s out of breath from running up the stairs by the time he reaches the door to the roof. It’s heavy, and for a moment he thinks it’s locked, but then he throws his hip into it and it groans open, and he looks across the roof and sees Dean.

He’s sitting on the edge of the big, boxy HVAC unit, back to Castiel. Beyond him, Cas can see nothing but blue sky.

“Dean,” he says, his heart in his throat.

He sees Dean’s shoulders tense, even though he’s sure he’s already heard the door. Then Dean says, in a voice that sounds more tired than angry, “Jesus Christ, Cas, it’s not like that. Just come over here.”

He does, and finds that Dean’s telling the truth; the HVAC box is several yards shy of the roof’s edge. Castiel circles around it hesitantly, eyes on Dean’s face. He’s looking down at his own bare feet, one heel kicking a frustrated beat against the metal, and it’s only when Castiel’s a few feet away that he sees that Dean is crying.

He swallows the anxious questions that threaten to pour from his mouth: _what’s wrong what’s wrong what can I do I’m so sorry._ Instead, he hoists himself onto the box a few feet from Dean, and folds his hands, and waits.

It takes longer than he thinks it should. The glare of the sun off the white-coated roof forces him to squint out at the horizon; from here, it’s a low, wooded bluff, unremarkable. Hidden below it somewhere is the sluggish Vermilion River. When the air conditioner groans to life beneath them, Castiel jumps, but Dean doesn’t budge. A pair of starlings speeds by, swerving around the corner of the building.

Dean says, “My brother tried to kill me last year.”

Castiel stops breathing.

“He, uh.” Dean lifts a self-conscious hand to scratch at the back of his neck. “We had this fight. A really bad one, and he won, and then he, uh — got down and had his hands on my neck and, yeah. He stopped eventually. I’m fine.” He says this last as if it dismisses all that went before; as if the rest doesn’t matter. “But, yeah. I guess that’s why.”

Castiel hears a low, wounded noise. It takes a moment for him to realize it came from his own throat.

“He was pretty messed up at the time,” Dean adds, reflexively. “He’d gotten on, uh — drugs and stuff, in college, and his girlfriend called me and I went out there to try and straighten him out, but it, uh — wasn’t really working, so anyway, wound up dragging his ass home and then to rehab, and — anyway. It’s a long, stupid story. I get why he was mad.”

“Dean,” says Castiel, the word punched out of his chest.

“It’s _fine,_ ” says Dean.

“It’s not,” Castiel counters, and the words break the dam on the grief welling up inside him. He finds that he’s crying, hot tears on his cheeks. He says, again, “It’s _not._ ”

“Okay, _stop,”_ says Dean, and he’s suddenly on his feet. The look on his face is desolate and furious. “You don’t — do this, okay? You don’t get to do this. I’m not —”

He stops, shaking. He looks like he half wants to hit Castiel. He doesn’t.

“Not what?” Castiel whispers. _Not worth it,_ his brain supplies, dredging deep into his own insecurities. _Not good enough. Not..._

“I’m not someone you cry for,” Dean says roughly. “I’m serious. Lock it down, or I’m done.” And he turns and leaves, the door banging loudly behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today in Canadian country music as source material: Corb Lund, [Short Native Grasses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmFf6O8e8rk).


	7. Marwayne

Castiel stays on the roof until the sun’s glaring directly in his eyes and his feet are sweaty in the leather of his shoes, and by the time he returns to the room, he’s furious. 

If Dean didn’t want to see him, he could have set the bolt. He hasn’t. He’s dressed for the rodeo, standing at the far side of the room, by the blinds; he turns when Castiel comes in, and half opens his mouth, and stops.

The door settles softly on its hinges. The latch clicks closed.

“I’m —” Dean starts, but Castiel speaks over him, his anger flowing out of his chest and sparking down his limbs. “Okay,” he says. “You know what? Fuck you.”

Dean stops short, visibly reeling, and sucks in a breath.

“I care about you,” Castiel rages. “I _get_ to care about you. And if you can’t fucking — if you’re too fucking _proud_ to tell me that your neck is a _massive fucking trigger for very valid reasons_ — then that’s on _you._ That’s a shitty fucking thing to do to me, even if you don’t give a damn what you’re doing to yourself.”

Dean is staring at him. Staring, like he’s a monster risen up from the earth; like he’s a bird that dropped out of the sky and opened its bill to speak. Castiel clenches and unclenches his fists, and tightens his mouth rather than feel it shake.

“Cas,” says Dean, and his voice comes out low and raw, like he’s hacking poisoned fluid from his lungs. “I’m — fucked up.”

Castiel stands his ground and doesn’t answer.

“Like really fucked up,” Dean adds, “like maybe PTSD fucked up, I dunno, but —” He draws in a deep, spasming breath, and grits out his next words like he’s setting down stones, one at a time, clumsy. “I thought I could keep that away from you, and I _can’t._ ”

“Then don’t,” says Castiel.

Dean snorts, dropping his head. “You make it sound so fuckin’ easy.”

“I had two separate panic attacks on our first night together. You helped me through both of them. How is that fucking easy?”

“Yeah, but you’re —” Dean gestures vaguely, then lets his hand flop back to his side. “You’re brave enough to do something about it. To admit it’s _there._ And after the bullshit you’ve been through — me, I’m just —” His mouth twists, and he doesn’t finish.

“Dean,” says Castiel, incredulous, “ _your brother tried to kill you._ ”

Dean’s shoulders rise an increment toward his ears. He looks at the floor. “I’m probably making it a bigger thing than it was.”

“All right,” says Cas. “Step one? No pretending that’s not a big deal. _Jesus._ Do Bobby and Ellen think it’s not a big deal?” He answers his question before Dean can, seeing the look on his face. “They don’t know. Fantastic.”

He feels kind of like punching something. That something probably shouldn’t be Dean, given the circumstances, but he can’t deny the appeal.

Dean takes a slow breath. He’s not looking at Cas. His fingers are tight in the fabric of the curtain, a stiff decorative one that doesn’t extend across the blinds. He says, “What’s step two?”

Castiel blinks. “What?”

Dean’s throat works. “What’s step two,” he repeats.

Castiel sucks in a breath. The words cost Dean; he can tell. The trust, the vulnerability, the unspoken admission: _I don’t know what to do._ “Step two,” he says, foundering. “Step two is — go ride a horse.”

It breaks the tension the way he wants it to. Dean snorts out a thread of a laugh, shaking his head. “A _horse,_ ” he mutters. He looks up, then, and meets Castiel’s eyes with a painful uncertainty in the muscles around his mouth. “You coming?”

Castiel laughs; he can’t help it. It comes out barking and humorless, but still, it loosens something in his chest. “Yeah,” he says, shaking his head. “Yeah. Just let me find my socks.”

\---

They don’t go directly to the arena. Dean turns the Impala into a greasy little diner, instead, with a U-shaped counter and old license plates and vintage car advertisements hammered onto the walls and the ceiling beams. He rattles off a combination without looking at the menu, winking at the waitress, and Castiel makes a hasty omelette decision, feeling himself flush under her watchful eye. She smiles at him, though, as she takes the laminated sheet from his hand, and under the table, Dean nudges his knee.

“She likes you,” he says in an undertone.

“Dean,” says Castiel, “don’t be ridiculous.” Then, because Dean’s eyes are still on him and he needs something to say: “If anything, she should be interested in you.”

“Nah.” Dean’s grinning at him from under the brim of his hat, and Castiel thinks that this is on some level, in some way, an apology. “She’s sick of cowboys. But _you_ walk in, with those dreamy blue eyes and city-boy clothes —” He stops, raising his eyebrows with a widening smile, and his gaze rakes up Castiel’s body.

Castiel feels himself flush deep red. “Stop it,” he hisses, as the waitress turns back toward them, but she keeps turning, toward the next party down the counter. “And I’m wearing jeans and a button-down, same as you.”

Dean opens his mouth as if to argue, which honestly might be fair; Castiel’s fashion sense is an algorithm trained on his sister’s taste and optimized for efficiency and comfort, but he’s aware his clothes are visibly expensive. He cuts Dean off, though, as the waitress moves away again. “Besides, I’m not sure what you’re trying to accomplish by throwing me at other people. Especially ones you know I’m not attracted to.”

Dean stops short, mouth snapping closed again. “I wasn’t,” he objects.

Castiel gives him a look. He hopes it conveys equal measures of _we-both-know-the-truth-would-be-more-interesting_ and _I-am-so-done-with-your-bullshit._

Dean’s shoulders twitch. He reminds Castiel, for a moment, of an annoyed horse. “Fine. Bad example. I’m just saying, you could have your pick of guys. You _should_ have your pick of guys. Sue me.”

“I _do_ have my pick of guys,” Castiel fires back, and further debate is forestalled by the arrival of their coffees.

The coffee is blessedly strong, and the food, when it comes, is good — almost pornographically good, especially with the way Dean apparently reacts to a plate full of bacon. Castiel is grateful, for the sake of his arteries, that he doesn’t have a diner like this in Calgary.

“There probably is one,” Dean points out, when he says as much. “We could find it.”

“Let’s not,” Castiel decides. “I’m looking forward to my cantankerous old age.”

Dean laughs. His eyes are on a license plate from American Samoa, displayed on the chimney above the cash register. “Sam always complained about the greasy food at diners. He’d ask if they had a salad and make the worst kind of bitch face if it was just an iceberg wedge.”

Castiel glances sideways at him. Dean piles egg on his toast and takes an enormous bite. “That seems reasonable,” Castiel says.

“Yeah, probably.” Dean shrugs, stuffing the remainder of the toast into his mouth. He wipes his fingers on a paper napkin and half-turns toward Cas, cheek still bulging. He chews once. “You about ready to get out of here?”

It’s a little more than an hour to the rodeo. “Whenever you are,” Castiel agrees.

\---

Dean, Castiel thinks, is throwing up walls.

He seems to have retreated from that iciest, cruelest one — _lock it down, or I’m done_. Maybe he meant to walk it back even before Castiel’s rant in their hotel room; it’s hard for Castiel to say. It’s been replaced, though, by softer ones, smokescreens: hearty charm and joking indifference, happiness too abrupt to be entirely unperformed.

Dean drums idly on the steering wheel for the rest of the drive to the arena, bobbing his head to the song on the stereo. He turns once toward Cas, mouth open as if he’s about to begin singing along, but he falters. His fingers flex on the top of the steering wheel, and he squints at the road ahead, dropping his chin, and says, “M’brother used to hate that song. I’d put it on loud to annoy him.”

And then there’s that.

Castiel doesn’t know what to make of it. He can’t tell if Dean is dropping these anecdotes deliberately, or unconsciously; if they’re part of the show he’s putting on or something else entirely. If he notices that these carefully unboxed memories are of things his brother hated, he doesn’t show it; the look in his eyes is closer to fond than haunted. Castiel supposes it’s normal, among siblings, for love and bickering to be all intertwined. He wonders when Dean and Sam crossed over the line to something else. He wonders if Dean knows himself.

He doesn’t really have a way of relating. Castiel loves his brothers and sister, but he’s never been especially close to any of them, even Anna. Aside from a few years of Gabriel’s teenagerhood, their household was always a quiet one. From things Dean’s said, it sounds like he and Sam lived out of each other’s pockets more often than not; like he might have had as much a share of raising Sam as his father did, after their mother’s death. Castiel can’t imagine the sheer loss of it, never mind the betrayal. He finds himself glancing at Dean more often, for the rest of the drive, and Dean avoiding his eyes.

Dean leaves him a little awkwardly at the rodeo grounds, hesitating for a moment as if he’d like to walk Castiel to his seat, or reach out to touch his hand in farewell. He doesn’t, though, just vanishes to wherever he goes to gear up and get ready to ride, leaving Castiel to his thoughts.

He feels a vague obligation to take stock. It’s not hard to get that Dean’s trying to warn him off; to read the message between the lines: _you don’t want to get involved with someone as screwed up as me._ That Dean hasn’t quite said it outright feels significant, but still, Castiel owes him this: to forge forward, if he does, with a clear sense of what he’s doing. What he wants.

_You could have your pick of guys,_ Dean said, and Dean’s not the first man who’s been interested in him, it’s true. He might be the first with whom the interest is mutual; he’s also been by far more compassionate and nonjudgmental about Castiel’s various hangups than — almost anyone. Even Charlie, when he thinks about it.

Does that mean his attraction is simple gratitude? Castiel rejects the notion almost the instant it occurs to him; that Dean is heart-stoppingly beautiful, he’s known since the moment he saw him. But he’s also _kind,_ and not only to Castiel. He makes him laugh. He took him to see a coral reef. He washed his damn car.

All of which is stupid, because each of those things feels pathetically small, inadequate for naming the first iota of what he feels for Dean. _Tell me about him,_ Charlie had asked, after their weekend together, and Castiel had frozen with the magnitude of the task. How to explain a human being — any human being, never mind this one. _Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,_ he’d thought, and then of Plato’s cave, any words he could muster mere shadows on the wall; but overwrought analogies didn’t belong to Dean.

_I’d want to know him,_ he’d said finally. _Even if I couldn’t have him in any other way, I’d just — want to_ know _him, and see how the world looks when he’s in it._

But he wants the other things, too. He wants Dean to be happy. He wants him in his bed; he wants him in his _life,_ sleepy and crabby and lit up with joy and _sad,_ too, he wants Dean to be sad — not that he wishes him cause for sadness — but he wants him to be okay with being sad, to show it, to feel at home. He _wants Dean,_ all of him, and he’s so breathless with it that he doesn’t realize it’s Dean in the chute, Dean in the dust and the sun and the sky, until it’s all over and Dean’s jogging out of the arena and the announcer is declaring, “An eighty-seven-point ride for Dean Winchester, which puts him pretty near untouchable, and boy was that a pretty one!”

Castiel blinks, in a haze. He barely remembers it, but it was, he knows it was; he felt the dance of it in his own blood, his own breath, every tingling inch of his skin. He _wants this man,_ in his glory and in his grief, and he —

There’s nothing about it that scares him.

That’s important, he thinks. He knows there could be; perhaps that there should be. But he can only feel his own soul singing with conviction. He knows who he is. He knows where he is. It’s where he’s meant to be.

Time wheels by without Castiel’s attendance. He’s somewhere else, lost in his own thoughts, and then the day’s nearly over, just three more bull riders to go, when one in deep purple with shining silver embroidery gets tossed over backwards, and clipped by a hoof, and doesn’t get up.

The bull turns for him. The bullfighters are there, unflinching, but it wheels and lunges for them, too, and they’re too busy dancing, luring it away, and the rider is lying there, motionless, and there’s blood in the dirt —

The arena is frozen. A couple screams’ shadows still linger in the air, but no one moves, except the desperate bullfighters. Castiel clenches his hands on the bench beneath him and fixes his eyes at the fallen rider, willing him to sit up, to be fine, to _move._ The rail of the catwalk, where the other riders wait, is lined with white fists like his. Grim, knowing gazes; men who have seen this before. The only sound is the thump of the bulls’ hooves as it breaks again for the body in the dirt.

And then the line of cowboys opens; someone shoulders through. The next moment, he’s leaping the rail, dodging a bullfighter, and he’s down in the dust at the fallen cowboy’s side. He’s got his head between his knees, stabilizing his spine, bending over him, murmuring low, and it’s Dean.

The bull kicks another great cloud of dust toward them, but Dean doesn’t flinch, hands quick and careful on the cowboy’s shoulders, his chest. Castiel sees him take his fingers and ask something, and the injured rider is moving his arm, answering, and then the bull is finally out of the arena and the EMTs are rushing in and Dean just stays there, still holding his head, for long minutes until someone looks at him and nods and he finally climbs to his feet and backs away.

Behind Castiel, around him, the crowd is murmuring — anxious. Then, finally, movement: the injured cowboy is pulled to his feet, flashing a dazed thumbs up to the crowd. He stumbles his way to the gate, leaning heavily on the EMTs. Dean is gone again, vanished back over the rail, and it occurs to Castiel that his eyes might be burning with more than just the dust.

When he finds Dean later, he’s quiet. There’s a spot of blood on the left knee of his jeans, tired lines around his eyes. Castiel puts a tentative hand on his shoulder, in the car, and Dean covers it with his own, squeezes before he lets go. “He’s got a concussion,” he says. “He’s going to be fine.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Castiel answers gravely, though he means much more. He releases Dean’s shoulder, and they drive in silence back to the hotel; trudge in silence up the stairs to their room. The moment they’re through the door and Dean drops his bag, Castiel takes him carefully in his hands and kisses him.

He kisses him by the luggage rack and he kisses him into bed, he kisses his temples and his eyelids and the sturdy beat of his heart, he kisses Dean’s hands and his ribs and his mouth again, always his mouth, and Dean makes small, senseless sounds and flutters his hands over Castiel’s back, his thighs, but Castiel stops him when he tries to go for his belt; just kisses him, and keeps kissing him, until Dean relaxes boneless into him and gives up all his fight.

They order pizza to the room, that night. They sprawl out on the bed together and watch stupid comedy on TV and don’t talk hardly at all, aside from the occasional burst of laughter, and when they fall asleep, limbs tangled, it’s with their shirts still on, and Castiel’s lips pressed to Dean’s hairline like it’s where they’ve always belonged.

\---

The quiet mood between them lingers all the next day. It persists through breakfast, and the remaining rides, and the ceremony where Dean’s handed a five-thousand-dollar winner’s check, which he folds carefully and tucks inside his wallet; it persists through the first few hours of their drive, through _Houses of the Holy_ and the first side of _Zeppelin IV,_ and they’re somewhere south of Edmonton, the last chords fading out and Castiel thinking he should reach to turn the tape over, as Dean doesn’t seem to have noticed, when Dean says suddenly, “He was a good kid.”

His eyes are on the road, but his head still twitches a little when Castiel looks his way. He laughs, a little self-consciously, and adds, “I mean — the best. Did his homework. Straight A’s. He was joining soccer teams and, and mathletes shit faster than I could keep up. Smartest fucking kid you ever saw.” Now that he’s talking, the words seem to spill out of him, like they’ve been there, at the ready, all the time. “He didn’t really like talking to Dad about it, but he wanted to be a lawyer. And like — be a lawyer who did _good_ shit. I always made fun of him, calling him a bloodsucker, y’know, and he’d get all worked up and go on about these, legal aid clinics, and, uh, Supreme Court cases, Brown v Board of Education and shit.”

He flushes slightly on the words, and Castiel sees, in a lightning flash of clarity, an image of a younger Dean, joking with a faceless, mop-headed teenager; pretending not to remember the cases and names. Then Dean says, “He got into _Stanford,_ ” and his voice chokes hard, a knot of pride and despair.

Castiel waits. Watches him quietly. Dean takes a shuddering breath, then another; the Impala doesn’t waver on the road. “And I guess that’s where it started to go wrong,” he says, voice so light it all but blows away.

“You miss him,” Castiel observes, after several moments pass and Dean doesn’t speak again.

“Yeah.” Dean’s face cracks into a wounded, helpless smile; he shakes his head, looking down, and Castiel sees that his eyes are glittering. “Yeah, I — miss him like a fucking hole in my head. All the fucking time.”

Castiel looks down at his own hands. His heart aches, but he doesn’t know what to say. There’s nothing he _can_ say to begin to fill that gulf of grief; he feels tears prick at his own eyes and fights them down.

“I haven’t seen him,” says Dean, “since —” He cuts himself off, and when Castiel looks up sharply, he’s gesturing at his neck, fingers fluttering toward it and away.

For a moment, Castiel just stares at him, uncomprehending.

He figures it out, he thinks, at the same moment Dean does. Dean’s face goes briefly slack, then utterly expressionless; he drives straight on for another second, another, and then he’s braking, pulling smoothly right, into one of those desolate roadside turnoffs with a portable toilet anchored by cables against the wind. The parking spaces are all empty. Dean brakes to a halt.

A semi roars past them, and the gust of wind off her side rattles the Impala’s cab. Dean puts her in park and drops his hands from the wheel.

“You thought,” he says. His voice is trembling, hollowed out. “Oh, shit. Oh, Jesus. You thought he was dead.”

Castiel has no idea what to say.

Once, at Dartmouth, he went to an animal shelter with Charlie, who was thinking of getting a dog. He remembers vividly, when the employees let them into the back, being swallowed by a riptide of sound. Dozens of chainlink kennels, each holding a trembling, needy, alien soul; they barked with eagerness and misery and incomprehension and directionless desire, bouncing off the linoleum and piling, deafening, in his ears. Castiel had to leave, then, and find a bench to sit and recover his nerves. Now, his own thoughts are just as cacophonous, just as impossible to disentangle, and he has no escape.

“He’s not,” says Dean. “Not as far as I know anyway, though fuck, that doesn’t mean much, honestly, and — _shit.”_ He wrenches his door open, causing an oncoming car to swerve quickly to the far side of its lane. Dean doesn’t seem aware; just slams the door behind him and walks quickly away from the Impala.

Castiel watches him in the rearview mirror. He stops at the edge of the pavement, hands in his pockets, and stares out toward the distant mountains, faint in the haze of the day. Scattered pumpjacks nod in the empty plains between them. Dean’s shoulders are high and tense.

Castiel closes his eyes. He breathes in deeply, once, again. Then he opens his door and follows.

“Dean,” he says, when he’s an arm length away. He’s surprised by how deep his voice comes out, how calm. “I’m sorry.”

Dean laughs horribly, not looking at him. “I mean, it makes sense. The way I been talking about him, you must’ve thought —”

“I wasn’t sure,” says Castiel.

“Yeah,” says Dean, “yeah, I — I left after that. My dad got him back into rehab, tracked him down at fucking _gunpoint,_ Cas, and I guess when he got outta there he was a little better, but — y’know, he had to drop out of school, so there he’s stuck at home with just my dad and that _can’t_ have been good, I shoulda been there probably, but we needed to sell the calves still and — anyway.” He heaves a breath. “Sam split. Ran back to California and right back at it, probably, which means all this shit was for _nothing,_ and — for all I know you’re right. For all I know, he’s dead in a ditch somewhere.”

Castiel wants to reach out and touch him. He’s not sure where, or how. “I’m so sorry,” he says again.

Dean solves his problem by extending a blind hand. Castiel steps closer to take it, and Dean squeezes his fingers, tight.

They stand for long minutes like that, two men holding hands at the edge of asphalt and sky, the roar of traffic at their backs. It feels like the calm in a storm. Like a measure of peace.

And if people can see them — if passersby are taking note of the way they’re standing there, the way their bodies lean toward each other, if they’re sniggering and joking about _Brokeback Mountain_ or sobering with a sudden gratitude for the beauty that is simple courage, as Castiel has so often, on street corners or in cafes — maybe not as often as he should — if people are looking at him and thinking _gay,_ in that obvious, factual way that has terrified him for so long — it doesn’t bother Castiel nearly as much as he always thought it would.

\---

When Dean exits the highway and squeezes the Impala’s broad body across two lanes of bridge traffic into the left-turn lane for Castiel’s street, Castiel swallows his anxiety and asks, fingers twisting in the fabric of his jacket, “Do you have to be back tonight?”

Dean gives him a brief glance. “Tomorrow morning. Pretty early.”

“Oh.” Castiel looks down at his hands. “I thought if you — well, you’d be welcome to stay the night. If you wanted. But I guess —”

The light changes, and Dean pulls into the turn. He purses his mouth. “I’d have to leave around four.”

“Ah,” says Castiel quickly. “Yes, I didn’t think you’d want to, it’s a long —”

At the same time, Dean says, “— I mean, if you’re okay with maybe being woken up.”

Castiel blinks. He opens his mouth, and closes it again, dumbly.

Dean squints against the glare off the buildings of the low evening sun. It’s nearly the solstice; the sun doesn’t set here until nearly ten in the evening. “Gonna have to find a place to park.”

“You can,” Castiel says faintly. “I have a guest space, if you — the parking garage is just up here on the right —”

Dean makes the turn, the Impala’s body rolling comfortably on the sudden slope. Castiel has to lean over him to show his ID to the guard at the gate, and he experiences a momentary panic — what if he’s given himself away somehow, what if this is how his father finds out — but that’s ridiculous, his father isn’t paying off the staff at his apartment building to tell tales on his son’s love life. Or at least, Castiel doesn’t think he is.

He shakes it off and directs Dean down a level to his space. They’re both shy, suddenly, as they retrieve their bags yet again from the trunk, and when Castiel leads the way into the expansive elevator with its mirrored walls, Dean swallows and removes his hat from his head.

He looks oddly young like this, avoiding eye contact with his reflected self. Castiel watches him covertly as the floors tick by, and frets and tries to keep himself from fretting. It’s too much. It’s too different. Dean will want to leave.

Dean doesn’t say anything when he turns the key in his apartment door, just follows him inside and sets down his duffel carefully. He hesitates for a moment, then toes off his boots.

Castiel lingers at the kitchen island, uncertain, but Dean walks carefully across the carpeted floor to the far window, resting his fingertips on the back of the couch. He looks out, surveying the city, the street below, and turns back to Cas with his face unreadable.

“Please don’t care,” Castiel blurts.

Dean pauses. Blinks. Then he points over his shoulder with a hesitant thumb and says, “That’s the sunset wall?”

“The — yes.” In his gratitude that it’s not a _this was a bad idea,_ an immediate _I should go,_ he babbles. “It gets the western sky reflecting off it, especially in half an hour or so when the sky’s really on fire, the angle makes it —”

“Yeah,” says Dean. His mouth curves upward a fraction. “You said.”

Castiel stutters to a halt. But as Dean looks at him, the expression on his face changes, dissolving from reserved amusement to mild horror. Castiel’s chest clenches. He steels himself for the worst.

“Cas,” says Dean, “you’re a _slob._ ”

Castiel glances around. He’s got a small pile of dishes unwashed in the kitchen sink. Notes and books piled high on one end of the kitchen island. The stove — it’s true, he forgot to clean the stove the last time a pot of pasta boiled over. There are two half-full glasses of water on the coffee table — both his. A discarded sock is balled up on the floor by the couch.

He feels his cheeks burn. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll clean this right up, I wasn’t expecting anyone over so —”

He’s halfway to the sink when Dean intercepts him, laughter at the corners of his mouth. He catches Castiel by the hips and stops him, maneuvering him gently back against the counter. They pause for a moment like that, eyes meeting, noses nearly brushing, and then Dean tilts his head that final fraction for a kiss.

In an instant, the spell of the last two days breaks.

Castiel makes a greedy sound in his throat and kisses back, sliding his tongue past Dean’s, licking over his teeth and into his mouth, and Dean slides his hands under Castiel’s thighs and boosts him suddenly, seamlessly, up onto the counter. Castiel grunts his approval, wrapping his legs around Dean’s waist, and Dean keeps kissing him, hands roaming, sliding under his clothing, needy and wild.

“Bedroom,” he advises Dean, when he breaks to run kisses down Castiel’s jaw, “bedroom, got a bed in it, very —”

He makes an undignified squawk when Dean pulls him off the counter, legs still locked around his back, but Dean’s bracing him, carrying him, and Castiel holds on for dear life. “Directions?” Dean asks politely, swaying just a little at the center of his entryway, and Castiel manages, “Straight back, second door on the left, don’t _hit my head on the lintel_ you monster —”

“Whoever uses the word lintel in casual conversation is the monster,” Dean tells him, lowering Castiel onto his own bed. “I don’t make the rules.”

It must take extraordinary muscle control to do that so smoothly, Castiel thinks, and Dean smirks as if he can read his thoughts. “Showoff,” Cas mutters, smacking Dean’s bicep with one palm, and Dean retreats, just far enough to look down fondly at Castiel, sprawled out, disheveled, beneath him.

Then he sees the rest of Castiel’s bed, and bursts out laughing.

“Wh —” Castiel cranes his neck, scowling, trying to see what Dean’s so amused by. Then he realizes: he’s lying among the pile of shirts he hastily tried on and discarded, the morning Dean picked him up. He’d had one picked out the night before, rejected it in the morning, went through a half dozen or more other options, finally returned to the one he’d first picked, and — well. The evidence is hard to refute.

“Shut up,” says Castiel. “You washed your car.”

Dean descends on him again, smiling like a shark. “Mighta tried on a few shirts, too,” he hums into the skin below Castiel’s ear. “But you can believe I put them back on their hangers after.”

All of which is very interesting, but at that moment, Castiel feels Dean’s erection brush between his legs, and his whole body lights on fire. “Dean,” he gasps, “Dean, I need — will you fuck me again, _please,_ I —”

But Dean stills. “Cas,” he says, “you don’t have to, I can —”

Cas hitches his hips toward him in frustration, seeking contact, failing. “ _Damn_ you stubborn asshole,” he snaps, “fuck me, or I’ll — I’ll do it myself.”

Dean’s renewed bout of laughter is predictable, if unhelpful. Castiel huffs out an annoyed breath, surges up, and flips him down onto the bed among the shirts. He settles straddling Dean’s hips, running a proprietary hand down his chest. “All right. Where were we?”

Dean’s eyes are wide, mouth still half laughing, a flush high on his cheeks. “Uh,” he says coherently.

“Right,” says Castiel. He swings off Dean briefly to shimmy out of his jeans. He takes his underwear with them, and sheds his remaining shirt while he’s at it, stretching to reach the lube in the nightstand drawer before settling, naked, back into position.  “This next bit will be easier if you get with the program.”

Dean’s hands slide, as if of their own accord, up Castiel’s thighs. “Kinda want to see you do it, now,” he breathes.

Castiel makes a frustrated growl. But when he meets Dean’s eyes, he throws a spark of challenge with his gaze, and he uncaps the lube, squeezes some out, and arches his back as he trails his own fingers over his thigh, around to his ass, and sinks onto them.

“ _Cas,_ ” says Dean, sounding just about as cracked open and wild as if Cas were finger-fucking _him._ Castiel ignores him, focusing on his second thrust, and shudders expansively, gasping, when he strikes his own prostate dead on.

“Cas,” says Dean again, and then he’s sitting up between Castiel’s legs, hips in his hands, kissing his chest, his throat. Castiel moans his encouragement, and Dean kisses him harder, stubble scraping his collarbone. He curls one hand over Castiel’s cock, then down around his balls, murmuring, “I got you, babe, I got you —”

His index finger slides up to where Castiel’s now pumping two of his own in and out, already slick with lube. Castiel retreats to allow him in, but when Dean presses carefully upward, gentle, Castiel catches his one finger between his own two and drives down on all three of them, eliciting a startled exclamation from Dean and a hum of appreciation from himself.

“Cas,” Dean manages a moment later, voice breaking, “Cas, I — I’m happy to do this all night, but if you wanna — I’m gonna come in my fucking pants watching you like this, so —”

Cas slides their fingers free and tilts forward to kiss Dean, hard. He removes Dean’s pants with a minimum of fuss, sliding off the bed to yank them down over his heels, and by the time he’s back Dean’s already found a condom, is already rolling it onto his cock, slicking it with lube, and Castiel catches his wrists and draws his hands away and sinks down onto him, groaning at the stretch, but not stopping, not until Dean’s buried deep inside him and flushed and panting beneath him, sweat beading on his forehead. He stays there for a moment, pinning him, and feels Dean’s hips tremble with the effort not to thrust; then Castiel smirks down at him and Dean gasps, “You absolute _asshole,”_ and Castiel decides to put him out of his misery.

He rises up and sinks down again, hard, and Dean cries out, hips snapping upward, and hits Castiel’s prostate dead on. Castiel lets out his own wordless exclamation, and then Dean’s hand is on his cock, Dean’s driving up into him, and Castiel grips his shoulders, his hips, leaving handprints that fade white and flush red, and Dean may be the one fucking him but he looks _wrecked,_ utterly destroyed, like the hottest fucking porno Castiel’s ever seen.

Dean comes with his hips stuttering, whole body shaking and arching and fighting to surge off the bed, and he keeps thrusting, making tiny desperate noises in his throat. His fingers go slack on Castiel’s cock, so Castiel takes matters into his own hands, and with two hard pulls, he’s spilling over Dean’s belly, his chest. Dean’s still shaking beneath him, utterly undone, and Castiel pulls off his softening cock and leans down to kiss him comprehensively, their bellies sticking together.

“God,” Dean breathes when he pulls back and flops down beside him. Castiel thinks, distantly, that he’s now going to have to wash a whole lot of shirts. “God, Cas. I needed that.”

“It’s yours,” Castiel informs him, “anytime you want it,” but Dean tenses beside him.

“Not,” he says quickly, “not that I just — want you for, I mean, I —”

Castiel lifts his head to look down at him fondly, and Dean shuts up. His eyes are vulnerable, searching, and Cas kisses him again.

“So you’re saying,” he says into Dean’s lips, “that this isn’t just a sex thing.”

Dean makes a frustrated noise. “Course not, Cas, you _know_ that, I —”

“You’re saying,” Castiel interrupts, “that I get to _care_ about you.” He smiles against Dean’s mouth, and runs gentle fingers through the hair above his ear, at the spot where it makes him shiver.

“Fucking Christ,” Dean says. “Yes. Fine.”

“Good,” says Castiel, and slides off the bed to find a towel to clean them up with.

The sunset wall has faded to lingering embers of dark, crimson-edged clouds, and Dean is already half drowsing when he returns. He makes a face when Castiel pulls the condom off his cock, but doesn’t object when Castiel wipes down his stomach, between his legs, and grumbles only half-heartedly when Castiel makes him lift up his weight enough to free the tangled covers. When he slides in beside him, though, Dean turns and throws a heavy arm over his chest and a leg over his thigh, pulling him close. Castiel stretches to reach his bedside clock, pulling it toward him to set the alarm.

“If we wake up at 3:30,” he says, “you’ll have time to meet my shower.”

Dean mumbles something Castiel takes for assent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I fucked up a little on the Marwayne rodeo — in real life, it's a one-go rodeo, with three separate performances with different sets of riders. Because I gave Dean two rides, I bumped up the prize money accordingly, to put it more on the scale of the Ponoka Stampede. I realize literally no one cares about this but me.
> 
> Song for this chapter, because I stole my favorite analogy from it, is Tyler Childers, [Universal Sound](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhvpA46e0wk).


	8. Branding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter took so long! Life has been crazy for the last month or so. Thank you all for your patience, and thanks again for reading! <3

Castiel drives down to the ranch for Wednesday night dinner, a trip he would’ve considered a major undertaking only a few weeks ago. Now, he keeps his window down for most of the hour and a half on the highway, wind in his hair and classic rock blaring on his speakers. He is, as Charlie’s already observed, utterly and unapologetically infatuated; there’s no point in reining it in now.

The meal, he’ll allow, is a little awkward. Bobby is mostly taciturn, chewing at him skeptically, and Jo — who’s home for the summer now that classes and graduation are over — is full of bright, invasive questions. Ellen smacks her hand with a spoon once, when she leans close to ask him if he knows Dean’s favorite Zeppelin song — Castiel doesn’t, but has gathered enough about the band’s catalogue to assume it’s laden with innuendo.

Asa, the other cowboy who works at the ranch, eats with them too. He’s even quieter than Bobby, but after dinner, he joins Dean, Cas, and Jo on a walk through the evening light to a lush riverside pasture where the horses are grazing, and falls back to keep pace with Castiel when Dean and Jo delve into an intense discussion of Battlestar Galactica.

“Dean teach you some riding?” he asks.

Castiel flushes. “Um,” he says. “I can’t say I retained much.”

He expects it to be a throwaway comment, but Asa cocks his head, considering. Then he disappears somewhere. Cas joins Dean and Jo in leaning against the fence, toying with the long grass stems that brush against his knees, and when Asa returns, he’s got his arms full of tack.

Before Castiel knows it, he’s up in Esmeralda’s saddle again, and Asa is patiently explaining neck reining and styles of saddles; how to safely carry a lariat and throw a basic loop. He’s more than a little embarrassed to realize just how much went over his head, two weekends ago with Dean — he really made no effort to direct Esmeralda, and she followed Dean without complaint, but he’d have done it entirely wrong if he tried.

It’s nice, in a way, to feel less dependent; a little more like, with a good horse, he could get where he needed to go. As if he’s a mind reader, Asa says, “My mom never learned to ride. Hates horses. I always figured better to know than not, even if it isn’t your thing.”

Castiel glances at the far fence, where Dean and Jo are perched, looking out at the river, ankles hooked over the rails. They look so much like brother and sister that it sends a sharp, sudden pain through his chest. He doesn’t know how to answer.

If it bothers Asa, he doesn’t show it, just asks, “You coming to branding weekend?”

Castiel startles. “I — what?”

“Branding,” Asa repeats. “Week from Saturday. Kind of a all-hands type of affair. Round up all the calves, brand ‘em, vaccinate ‘em. Dean said he might ask if you’d want to come.”

“He hasn’t mentioned it yet,” Castiel admits. “But I — yes, I’d love to help.”

“Help more if you can ride,” Asa says, and there’s something at the corner of his mouth that Castiel thinks might be a smile.

He asks Dean about it later, between stolen kisses in the knee-high grass behind the old lambing shed — a relic from the days when the ranch kept sheep. Dean pulls back far enough to look him in the eyes and says, “Cas, I’d love for you to come, but you gotta remember — we’re raising these guys for beef.”

Castiel blinks up at him in surprise. “I know.”

Dean sighs. “I know you know, I just — some people can’t stomach it. Branding, I mean. We do it as quick and painless as we can, but we’re still sticking a hot iron in their flank. If it’s too much…”

“If it’s too much,” Castiel says, “I’ll tell you.”

He holds Dean’s gaze, keeping his expression calm under Dean’s scrutiny. “Okay,” says Dean after a moment, kissing him again. “Okay.”

Castiel doesn’t stay the night — he’s behind on work, for one thing, and he also feels some vague sense of propriety, like he’s come courting and shouldn’t overstay his welcome, push Dean’s family too far. He’s pretty sure Dean would laugh at him, if he put it like that, but he’s not entirely convinced he’s wrong. When he’s saying his goodbyes, Bobby stumps down from the porch to gruffly shake his hand. Jo gives him a hug, and Asa bobs his head, tipping his hat. Ellen just raises her beer with a smile.

\---

Castiel finally has the samples he ordered from the core storage facility, and he needs to spend that weekend in the lab, taking advantage of mass spec time when he can get it. It’s tedious work — the instruments need reloading every four hours, and usually some troubleshooting as well — so he has no time to spare for accompanying Dean to his rodeo in Innisfail. It’s only an hour and a half from Calgary, though, as far north as the Walking L is south, and so on Friday night Dean arrives with his travel bag, dusty and sweaty and smelling of horse, and stumbles into the shower.

When he reemerges, he lets Castiel order them enough Chinese food for a small army and press him down onto the couch with a beer and a selection of his DVDs. He gripes about the poor representation of westerns, but seems happy enough with Indiana Jones, in the end. Once Cas joins Dean on the couch and Dean pulls him snug to his hip, it’s not like even Harrison Ford can keep their full attention for long.

Dean spends Saturday at the rodeo, commuting up in the morning, and when Cas gets back from work it’s to find him already home and freshly showered, wearing one of Cas’s shirts and humming his way around the kitchen, discovering pots and pans. There’s a winner’s check in his pocket, and he’s halfway through cooking them both a chicken piccata so good it’s almost hard to believe.

He’s bought white wine to use in the sauce, but Castiel goes to the fridge and finds the bottle his mother left on her last visit, almost five months ago now. He’s sure it cost an arm and a leg and is far too refined for either of their palates, but it tastes delicious all the same. They drink it with dinner, moving on to the remainder of the cheap bottle once they’re done, with the result that they’re both a little tipsy an hour or two later when Castiel’s laptop chimes with the sound of an incoming call from Charlie.

Castiel hits the video button without hesitating, and pulls Dean against his hip when he makes a vaguely alarmed sound. He’s flushed and loose-limbed and laughing, stupidly beautiful, and Castiel puts a chin on his shoulder and says, “Hey Charlie,” and Charlie says, “Holy _shit._ ”

Dean turns brighter red and tries to right himself, adjusting his shirt, but Castiel digs down with his chin, and Dean desists. “Uh,” he says. “Hi.”

“You’re,” Charlie sputters. “You must be Dean.” Her eyes are wide in the glow of her computer screen, the room dark behind her; Castiel will have to nag her about ruining her vision. “Holy shit. I mean, I don’t swing that way, but — _damn._ ”

“It’s, um. Nice to meet you,” Dean says, striving for a semblance of dignity. Castiel slips a hand beneath his shirt, tracing the line of his hip. “Cas has told me a lot — about you —”

“Likewise,” Charlie says, bug-eyed. “I, uh — feel like I might be interrupting something.”

“No, we’re just — eating dinner —” Dean attempts, but at that moment Castiel thinks it might be funny to slide his hands around Dean’s belly, under his shirt, and so he does, and Dean startles. Then Cas slips a finger past the waistband of his jeans, teasing, and Dean makes a strangled noise, says, “You know what, yeah, you better call back another time,” and slams Cas’s laptop shut.

“You are a handsy fucking drunk,” he gasps, turning as if to free himself, but Castiel backs him up against the table instead. He stops himself from nuzzling into Dean’s neck, remembering, and kisses his mouth instead, sloppy, perfect. He hums happily into it when Dean responds.

“Yeah,” he murmurs a moment later, when they break free. “Yeah, tha’sme. Handsy.” He tweaks both Dean’s nipples with his thumbs as he says it, and smiles, pleased with himself, when Dean sucks in a sharp breath. “Whatcha gonna do about it?”

“Got a couple ideas,” Dean admits, and lets Cas crowd him, laughing, to the bedroom.

\---

The following Saturday, Cas wakes up at four — he’s gotten in the habit of rising early, as he’s found that Dean will sometimes have cell service and a few minutes to spare at the start of his day — to drive down to the Walking L.

He gets there at six and finds that it’s already bustling. There are unfamiliar pickups in the yard, and Dean’s saddling horses and loading them into trailers. His eyes warm when he sees Cas, and his chin tilts in greeting, but he’s quickly pulled into conversation with someone Castiel doesn’t recognize. A several-minute explanation of something — directions, Castiel thinks — later, he comes over to greet him, and somehow his whole body seems to be smiling, though he doesn’t reach for Cas or take his hand.

“Hey,” he says. “You down to ride Esmeralda? Help us round ‘em up? Asa says he thinks you’re good for it.”

Castiel swallows. He’s not sure he shares Asa’s confidence. “Yes,” he says anyway.

“Awesome,” says Dean. “I just gotta —” He hesitates for a moment, and Castiel thinks that he wants Dean to kiss him, but there are people here, not just Dean’s people, and they decided. “We’ll be ready to go in just a few.”

They drive the route Dean took him three weeks ago, but instead of turning off at the bridge, they continue farther west, ascending out of the river valley and winding into the hills. After a few miles, they turn in convoy down a rutted, muddy two-track that vanishes out into the prairie.

Twenty-some minutes of jolting and fishtailing later, when Castiel has bitten down several times on the question of whether this is really a smart road for driving trucks with trailers, they finally pull to a stop. They’ve arrived at a maze of corrals, like those he sees on rodeo grounds, standing by itself in the middle of the prairie.

There are even more people there than before, a few families with children that Castiel thinks he might recognize from the rodeo. He hangs close to Dean’s side at first, unsure of himself, but then Bobby jerks his chin at him and barks something, and at Dean’s encouraging nod, Castiel hurries over.

“You’ll be with me and Asa,” Bobby says, when he gets there. He lays a hand on Cas’s horse. “Ezzie here knows what she’s about. Your job is to hold your place in line, nothing fancy. Don’t go too fast; if in doubt, hang back. If a critter makes a break for it, wait for someone to help. Got that?”

“Yes, sir.” Bobby’s face crinkles in what might be a shadow of a smile. Heart thumping, Castiel asks, “What about Dean?”

“He’s running Floss,” says Bobby, over his shoulder; he’s already turning away. “Clearing out the draws.”

Turning to look for Dean, Castiel sees he’s down on one knee, surrounded by a knot of sleek fur and wagging tails, Floss among them. The dogs must have arrived with Jo; she slides out of the truck, grinning, and half them detach from Dean to wind around her knees.

Esmeralda’s already saddled and waiting calmly, but Castiel goes over her tack anyway, reminding himself what each component is for. He even remembers what most of them are called. His saddle doesn’t have a lariat on it today; they’ve no doubt judged him unequal to the task of roping. That’s probably wise.

By the time he’s finished his reconnaissance, people around him are starting to get into their saddles, and he follows suit with a minimum of fuss. Everyone seems to be very busy, talking rapidly to each other, but no one pays him any mind. Then suddenly Dean’s there, on Daphne, pulling up in a swift clatter of dust and hooves.

“Hey,” he says. “I almost forgot. I got you something.” And he reaches out across the gap between them and sets a pristine new cowboy hat on Castiel’s head.

Castiel pulls it off to examine it. It’s off-white, with a black band; the material feels nice, weighty, expensive. “Dean,” he protests, “I’ll get it dirty.”

“That’s kind of the point.” Dean grins. “Put it on. You look awesome.”

Castiel obeys. And then Dean is gone again, and they’re moving out, Bobby in the lead: a long, straggling line across the prairie.

Rounding up cattle, Castiel discovers, is a lot more boring than he’d have thought. Not universally — Dean’s pretty much in constant motion, taking off over the far hills with Floss at his heels, returning herding handfuls of disgruntled-looking stray cows and calves — but for him, it’s mostly sitting and waiting, moving when Asa or Bobby signals him to press forward. Even then it’s only at a steady walk, helping to keep pressure on the growing mass of cattle rolling along before them.

It is, he thinks, not unlike making a giant snowball — an experience Charlie introduced him to during their freshman year at Dartmouth. Steady pressure, adding mass at a sustainable rate. Go too fast, or shove it down a slope, and odds are the whole thing will fall apart.

When the corrals come back into view, Castiel realizes for the first time that they’re not the only group that ventured out. Ellen and Jo are leading another, and they’ve made it back first, funneling cows and calves into the first of the sequence of pens. Castiel follows Bobby’s command to hang back, waiting for Ellen’s group to finish before bringing their own herd in. Jo’s calling commands to three or four dogs, who work through the grass with the lightning energy of eels, cutting off any cattle who start to shy away.

There’s not much for Castiel to do, when their turn comes. Esmeralda stands like a statue beneath him, staking out their segment of perimeter, occasionally switching her tail.

Once all the cattle are inside the pen — and it’s a _lot,_ now that he looks at them en masse, their mooing a steady cacophony — Bobby comes up alongside him, his horse prancing slightly to a halt. Castiel can’t shake his awe at how all these cowboys move like their horses are an extension of themselves. He has to think carefully through his actions every time he wants Esmeralda to go or stop.

“You’re on ground duty,” Bobby says. “I think Ellen wants her rope horse back.”

Castiel starts, and he sees Ellen smiling across the pen at them. She’s wearing chaps, and has a lariat at her hip. Esmeralda’s ears prick forward, and she takes a step toward Ellen, showing more enthusiasm than she has all day.

Of course. It makes sense that Ellen doesn’t just oversee the ranch; she must spend plenty of time on horseback herself. And Esmeralda may tolerate Castiel well enough, but she’s undoubtedly used to working with a much more talented rider.

Feeling uncomfortably grateful for Ellen’s generosity, Castiel turns over her horse and relegates himself to the chuckwagon crew, who welcome him with open arms. Soon, he’s slicing what must be thirty pounds of potatoes, and running water back and forth to the cowboys, and stoking the fire where they heat the branding irons. He barely has time to pay attention to the branding itself, but when he stops to watch, rubbing sweat from his brow, he’s astonished by the efficiency he sees at work. Ellen and someone Castiel doesn’t know are roping from horseback, while Jo works the gate, releasing calves into the branding pen one at a time. Once the calf is caught in a pair of ropes, Dean and Asa are there to wrestle it into stillness, and Bobby is ready with the iron. The whole thing takes only a few seconds; other helpers swarm around the calf to vaccinate it, and then it’s loose and running to the far gate.

The positions seem to rotate as the day wears on — sometimes there are two calves going at the same time, and even the kids get involved — and at one point Dean comes over, utterly grimy and glowing with sweat, to check on Castiel.

“You’re okay?” he asks. His chest is heaving slightly, and he stinks. The dust caked to his face is so soaked in sweat it looks more like mud. Castiel wonders faintly what Dean would have to do to seem unattractive to him. He’s not sure the possibility exists.

“I’m doing well, thank you,” he answers, and Dean gives him such a penetrating look that he starts laughing.

“I mean it,” he says, less formally. “It’s — humbling, seeing all these people come together. I was talking to Sheriff Mills —” he nods his head at the no-nonsense woman who showed up half an hour ago in full uniform and is currently assembling a salad “— and Rufus Turner. The whole town comes out to these.”

“Yeah,” says Dean. A smile hovers on his lips. “Yeah, it’s a pretty big thing.”

“Thank you for inviting me,” says Castiel, more quietly.

Dean smiles more broadly. “I think it was technically Asa who invited you.”

“Yeah, well.” Castiel grins, showing his teeth. “I’ll take what I can get. Are you eating?”

“Only if you are,” Dean says firmly. “Come on. You’ve earned a break.”

\---

Hours later — once the last calf is branded and the herds turned loose again on fresh pasture, once the various helpers have all gone home, once every last dish is washed and every last horse is rubbed down and every last piece of equipment is returned to its proper place and they’ve all had a chance at a shower — the six of them sit on the front steps of the big house with plates full of leftovers and beers that drip cool condensation in rivulets down their palms.

They’re all kind of quiet, after the intensity of the day. Asa’s got a beat-up guitar out, and is picking something on it. Dean leans his leg against Castiel’s side, sitting a step above him on the stairs. Bobby’s hauled a faded camp chair out of his trailer — he lives, Castiel’s learned, in an old Airstream behind the main house — and has his head tipped back in it, eyes closed. Jo is humming to Asa’s music, a little dreamily, and Ellen’s stepped inside to check the phone.

She comes back out with an unreadable face. “Dean,” she says. “Your father left a message.”

Castiel feels Dean stiffen, then shift carefully out of Castiel’s space, cutting off the contact between them. “What did he say?”

“Just to give him a call back.” Ellen purses her lips, and Castiel thinks there’s something disapproving in her eyes.

“Yeah,” says Dean, “yeah, okay,” and he gets to his feet, stumbling a little. He suddenly looks years younger, awkward and almost gangly, but he’s disappeared into the house before Castiel can study him long enough to figure out why.

The silence he leaves is a tense one. Then Bobby starts, with deliberate cheer, to tell a story about a calf that got loose from Rufus, some branding past; about his antics running around the pen trying to catch it, and how a young Jo, entrusted with the roping for the first time and flush with confidence, went for the calf’s legs and snagged Rufus instead.

By the time Dean returns, Jo’s acting it out, attempting to play both parts before deputizing Asa to stand in for her role. As Rufus, she flops theatrically on the ground, clutching her ankles, and dissolves into peals of laughter.

Dean’s laughing too as he slips back onto the steps, settling into his place by Cas’s side as if he was never gone. No one asks, or fusses over his return, and when he jumps in a moment later with a story of his own, he’s animated, bright with enthusiasm, talking with his hands.

It’s almost enough to lull Castiel into thinking things are fine. Almost, but not quite, and clearly Bobby agrees, because he pulls Dean aside when the others start dispersing toward bed; speaks to him in low tones. There’s something defensive in Dean’s posture, and there’s that incongruous youth again. Castiel thinks it’s in the jut of Dean’s jaw, maybe; something that conjures up an angry teenager, refusing to admit that he can’t yet take care of everything on his own.

“Dean,” Castiel says, when Bobby leaves them, but Dean just leans his shoulder hard against Castiel’s, and starts across the yard.

Castiel hasn’t yet been inside Dean and Asa’s bunkhouse. He retrieves his bag from the car and follows Dean up the steps; the moths are flitting around the yard lights, and Asa’s already disappeared to bed.

They step into a large, comfortable common room, with a beat-up couch against one wall and an ancient-looking wood-fired cooking stove against the other. It’s so enormous that Castiel imagines, for a moment, that it’s always been here; that the house was built around it. There’s a fridge and a modern range next to it, and the stove light is on, the only thing illuminating the room. A power strip by the couch bristles with cords, and there’s bits of leather on the coffee table, along with some tools.

“Asa’s learning saddlemaking,” Dean says in a low voice, following Castiel’s gaze. Then, a little self-consciously: “This, uh. This is the place. Bathroom there —” he points — “and I’m through here.”

He leads the way through the door to their left. The room they enter is long and narrow; it could probably fit two bunks, along the wall, but Castiel only makes out one. There are windows on three sides, and the dim orange light of the yard is visible through the curtains. Inside, it’s dark. Castiel loses track of Dean in the gloom, and fumbles for a lightswitch, but finds none.

“They didn’t bother wiring the rooms, when Bill put in electricity.” Dean’s disembodied voice sounds apologetic. Then comes the sound of him fumbling with something, and a moment later, a match strikes. The warm glow of a hurricane lamp fills the room.

In its soft light, Dean looks nervous. He sets the lamp down on a small wooden dresser. Behind him is a narrow bed, draped in a red wool blanket. It looks thick and warm, tucked in with military precision. On the small nightstand, Castiel thinks he can make out a few photos, propped up carefully where they’ll catch the light. Aside from them, the room is clean and spare.

“Is that your mother?” he asks, starting forward without thinking.

He has to brush against Dean to get there — the gap betwen bed and wall is narrow — but Dean pivots with him, following his gaze. “Yeah,” he says. His voice is tender, rough. He hesitates, then adds, “And that’s Sammy.”

It takes Castiel a moment to understand what he means. The next photo is of a man and two boys, one leaning against his shoulder and the other perched on his knee. Dean’s father, Castiel thinks, and Dean; which means the smaller boy must be Sam.

He reaches to pick it up, and another photo falls from behind it. It’s a more recent picture, in brighter color. On the left is Dean, face dropping toward his shoulder as if to tuck away his radiant grin. On the right, an impossibly tall young man, with dark, floppy hair, also smiling; his mouth is open, mid-speech. Every line of the photograph Dean’s body communicates joy, and something sharper, more acute; gratitude, Castiel thinks, that the moment the photographer has captured ever existed at all.

Maybe he’s reading too much into it. The Dean behind him makes a soft, punched-out sound, and Castiel doesn’t think he’s far off base.

“My dad,” says Dean. “He, uh. Put Sam’s rehab on a credit card, apparently. There’s debt. A lot of debt.”

Castiel turns to study him. “Did you know?”

Dean’s shoulders hunch slightly. “He only said he’d take care of it.” He sounds ashamed, like he thinks Castiel will judge him for failing to know better than trust his father’s word. “Now it’s…” He shrugs.

“Dean.” Castiel traces a hand down Dean’s cheek, and Dean shudders and leans into it. His eyes are closed. The soft light of the lamp illuminates the hollows in his face.

“I just gotta,” he says, then laughs, shakily. “Just gotta keep winning.” He opens his eyes. “If I can win Calgary, then we’re good to go.”

The Calgary Stampede, Castiel thinks; even he has heard of it. It’s in July, only a few weeks away. He saw something in the news about a hundred-thousand-dollar grand prize.

“Then of course you will,” he says, running his fingers again over Dean’s cheekbone. He leans in, carefully, to kiss him.

Dean shudders with his whole body. Then he’s suddenly hooking his fingers in Castiel’s shirt, melting against him, and pulling them both over backwards onto the bed. They crash down hard, Dean’s head narrowly missing the wall, and the mattress springs groan beneath them; then Dean’s legs are falling open, he’s hooking one ankle over Castiel’s calf and breathing, “Cas, I — need you to fuck me tonight, _please_ say you will —”

They haven’t done that yet. It doesn’t matter. “Anything,” Cas whispers, into his lips. “Anything you want, I —”

His words and rational thoughts are cut off when Dean grinds up into him, and Cas gasps and ruts hard against him, nearly driving them both across the bed. The mattress takes the opportunity to whine again, horribly, and then Dean’s laughing and Castiel’s laughing and they’re both sitting up and Dean’s murmuring, “Here, we’ll put the blanket on the floor.”

Castiel follows his lead. Dean sweeps the blanket free in one motion, then settles it carefully on the floorboards, walking past the dresser to where the room is wider. The planks of the floor are clean, shining in the lamplight, and Dean hesitates only a moment before kicking off his boots and sinking, kneeling, at the blanket’s center. He starts then, as if to get up, then says, “Stuff’s in the nightstand,” and Castiel retrieves it and comes to kneel too, facing him.

It’s a stupid, awkward position. They’ve got two pairs of knees separating them, and the blanket-covered floor isn’t as uncomfortable as he expected, but it’s still harsh on his knees. Something about it feels necessary, though. A ritual; a sacrament.

Castiel sets the lube and condoms down beside them. He repeats his motions from earlier, cupping Dean’s face in his hand, drawing him close for a kiss. Dean’s eyelashes brush against his when they flutter closed, then open again. And then Dean’s folding his legs out of the way and sinking onto his back, and Castiel follows him without breaking the kiss, deepening it, until Dean makes a tiny, desperate sound in his throat.

“I got you,” Castiel tells him, “I’ve got you, it’s okay,” and he runs his hands up Dean’s sides, over his chest, unbuttoning. He dispenses with Dean’s shirt, then his undershirt. Dean makes to follow suit, but seems to get distracted clutching onto Castiel’s hips, so Castiel finishes the job himself, pulling his T-shirt over his head. Dean laughs slightly at that, and goes to smooth his hair, and Castiel angles down on him, pressing him back to the floor, bare chests, warm skin to skin.

How he gets their jeans off, he doesn’t recall — it seems like it should be awkward, maneuvering legs into manageable configurations, but it isn’t somehow, and then they’re both naked, bodies golden in the lamplight, moving together, open-mouthed and needy. Dean makes another sound, and Castiel kisses his chest, his belly, the base of his cock, then moves south to lick him open, laving Dean with a gentle tongue.

It takes only moments before Dean’s clenching his fists in the blanket and begging, pleading, and Castiel presses one slick finger slowly inside him. “I’m ready,” Dean keeps saying, “I’m ready, _please,_ ” but Castiel ignores him, continues methodically stretching him open, until he’s slick and loose and all his words are broken, cock straining, untouched, and then Castiel rolls on the condom and lines himself up and slides in slowly, burying himself in clenching heat.

It’s the best thing he’s ever felt. It’s white-hot bliss, shorting out his brain, and Dean convulses around him and says something that isn’t words at all, and his fingers find Castiel’s shoulder, dig in painfully. Castiel follows his touch down, folding Dean nearly in half beneath him. He draws himself out, trembling with the effort of restraint, and drives back in.

He’s rewarded by Dean’s near-shout of a response, and then Dean is gripping his hips and begging, “Please, Cas, _please,_ just fuck me, please, I —” and Castiel obeys, cups Dean’s head between his hands and buries himself inside him, faster, faster, bringing their mouths together in punishing kisses and then threading a hand down between them to find Dean’s cock. He jerks him off in unison with his thrusts, sloppier than he’d like, because he’s near the edge himself here, he’s starting to lose it, along with all semblance of rhythm.

It doesn’t matter. He makes a final thrust and Dean’s spilling in his hand, across both their bellies, shaking and keening and clenching around Castiel, and Castiel takes a breath and lets go and follows him down, down, through electric sensation and breathless half-kisses, and when his brain stops spinning and he opens his eyes it’s to Dean spread out and boneless beneath him, all gold and shadow, still clenching with aftershocks around Castiel’s cock.

Castiel doesn’t pull out right away. He spends his last thrusts lazily, rolling his hips into Dean, and each time Dean shudders again, quiet now, all the sound wrung out of his lungs. Castiel kisses his shoulders and his stomach and his chest, his arms, his hands, until Dean says, faintly, “Cas,” and then he pulls out and disposes of the condom and returns to Dean, settles alongside him, hooking their legs together and wrapping one arm around his chest.

“You don’t,” says Dean vaguely. “You don’t gotta use one of those next time. Unless you want to.”

Castiel runs his fingertips, spaced out, over four of Dean’s ribs. “Okay,” he says, and then, emotion brimming fierce in his chest, “Dean, I —”

He stops himself. It seems out of line; it’s too early, too much. But Dean opens his eyes, still fragile and hollow, and says, “What?”

Castiel touches his face for reassurance, Dean’s and his own, and considers how to proceed.

It’s too much. It’s not enough.

“I don’t have much experience doing this. Any experience doing this,” he says, and his voice comes out rough. He breathes in carefully, back out. “And I know it’s supposed to be a big deal, and you’re supposed to take a while and be sure. And I _do_ want to take a while and be sure. About all of it. But I don’t know why loving you has to be the last thing. It feels to me like it’s among the very first.”

Dean sucks in a sharp breath, and says, “ _Cas,_ ” and Castiel covers his lips with a finger before he can say more.

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t.”

Dean is tense against him. Castiel keeps holding him, though, and he relaxes, slowly, settling back onto the blanket. Castiel kisses him next to his ear and murmurs, “Think we can risk moving this back to the bed?”

That startles a laugh out of Dean, and he turns his head, suddenly, to plant a fierce kiss on Castiel’s lips. “Yeah,” he says, and kisses him again, and three more times, and they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a song this time, let's go back to the Corb Lund well: may you always have [Cows Around](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nk8-MqnHlw).


	9. Three Days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, cowboyfic folks! I'm sorry this chapter took so long. I hope it was worth waiting for. <3

The first day of the Calgary Stampede dawns bright and clear, with Dean poking Castiel in the armpit to let him up and out of bed.

Castiel yelps at the indignity, and manages to swat Dean’s bare ass as he dances away, laughing. He gets his revenge on his knees in the bathroom, hands on wet skin and mouth on Dean’s cock, and pulls off in time to force both of them right back into the shower to clean off. Dean returns the favor, and by the time breakfast and coffee are ready, they’re both still shirtless, trading open-mouthed kisses and heated touches every time they pass each other in the kitchen.

Ellen’s given Dean the next four days off completely for his initial slate of rides. If he does well enough in his pool, he’ll advance to the semifinals, nearly two weeks away; from there, he’d be only two rides away from victory.

Those few rides — four this week, the possibility of two more in ten days' time — will be on the backs of some of the most storied broncos in the business. Dean’s been talking for weeks about the horses that will be here: Kessler and Vold and the Stampede stock themselves, Grated Coconut among them.

He still hasn’t had his chance for a matchup, and most of his losses this season have been to cowboys who drew one or the other of the mother-son coconut pair. The Stampede draws came out yesterday, though. Tomorrow, Dean will face Grated Coconut for the first time in his rodeo career.

The ridiculousness of it never fails to bring a smile to Castiel’s face. The name doesn’t exactly inspire images of legendary westerns and rippling manes on the open range. He’s been stockpiling ingredients in the hard-to-reach cabinet above the fridge, though; preparing to surprise Dean with cocktails and curry and German chocolate cake, an entire coconut-themed feast.

But it’ll have to wait. Castiel chokes on the unfairness of it. His parents announced yesterday that they’re making an impromptu trip to visit him; that his father needs to hammer out some negotiations with Ellen in person. The oil deal seems to have stalled — Castiel isn’t sure of the details, has kept a deliberate distance since he and Dean became whatever it is they are, and his father hasn’t pushed him on it. Maybe he blames Castiel. But whatever’s going on, it apparently requires Charles’s personal hand.

So — he and Castiel’s mother are coming to the Stampede. It’s not like they’re staying in Castiel’s building, but they’ll come by, in all likelihood, and whenever Castiel thinks about trying to sneak Dean in and out under their noses, a sick panic rises in his veins.

Dean’s accepted it gracefully, but Castiel still feels guilty. With the rhythms they’ve fallen into over the last month, exiling Dean feels like ripping off his own arm. It doesn’t help that Charlie has been planning a trip out specifically to meet Dean, and see him ride in the Stampede; she’ll be occupying Castiel’s spare room, and now engaging in the familiar, awkward song and dance of pretending to be straight while insisting to both Castiel’s parents that no, they’re not dating, they’re still just friends.

He’s not sure what he ever did to deserve a friend like Charlie. He’s not sure what he ever did to deserve Dean, or any of this, and the emotion rises up to choke him before Dean leans in with coffee breath and kisses him and says, “Hey. Outta your head, remember?”

“Yeah,” says Castiel, a little shakily. He’s still in his sunny kitchen. He still has twenty-four hours of Dean, and then three days of his parents, but he’ll have Charlie here, and then they’ll be gone and he’ll have Dean again. It’ll be all right. He just has to make it through. He doesn’t even have to ride any monster horses in the meantime.

“I’ll be fine,” says Dean. It’s another reminder he’s taken up as a mantra, once he worked out how Cas goes tight and pissy with anxiety that Dean might get hurt; he doesn’t seem to have realized it’s the opposite of helpful. Because people _do_ get hurt, they get hurt all the time, and denying that doesn’t change the probabilities.

“Christ, Cas,” says Dean. “You need me to blow you again? ‘Cause I’m in if you are.”

Castiel laughs, self-conscious. “No, I’m good. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, you’re all right,” says Dean, and kisses him again, and Castiel doesn’t say, _I love you._

\---

Dean rides an 88. He’s third on the day, and happy with it; the draws favored his competitors. For a first step toward something so momentous, it doesn’t feel much different from a regular weekend, a regular score. Castiel takes him out to dinner to celebrate, and Dean lets him, and at ten they pick up Charlie from the airport. She flings her arms around both their necks in turn and interrogates Dean for the whole drive back downtown, about his ride and rodeo and rules and mechanics, and Castiel learns half a dozen things he didn’t know before.

He means to go to bed early, but first he offers Charlie a drink and then she’s explaining the twist in a new game she’s designing and then they’re booting it up on Castiel’s own computer to see. Dean leans comfortably against the back of his chair and finishes his beer and then kisses Castiel’s forehead and murmurs that he’s going to bed, and Castiel feels his whole being flush with happiness, and Charlie’s eyes warm on his face.

He doesn’t end up joining Dean until after three in the morning — he didn’t mean to stay up so late, but it’s Charlie, and he hasn’t seen her in nearly a year. When he slides between the sheets, Dean mumbles something and scoops Castiel in, under his arm. He buries his face in his shoulder and soon his breathing evens out again, low and familiar.

Castiel stares up at the darkened ceiling and thinks of how lucky he is. How difficult it is to fathom that he gets to have this; that it isn’t just physical, isn’t just the chemistry of instant need. That Dean can sleep in his bed and get along with his friend and pull him close for nothing more than the warmth of togetherness; that they’ll be forced apart for a few days, yes, but it doesn’t matter, carries no urgency, because they both know the other will be there on the other side.

He drifts to sleep with a smile still on his face.

\---

Three days. He can handle three days.

That’s what Castiel tells himself, returning his mother’s exact, perfume-scented embrace. She holds him at arm’s length when she releases him, smiles with her eyes and reaches up to adjust the hair at his forehead that always likes to spike up, tucking it back into place. Then she says, “Charlene,” and turns to kiss Charlie carefully on the cheek.

“Castiel.” His father’s grip on his hand is firm, smile perfunctory. It surprises Castiel, every time he sees his father after a while, that he’s not a tall man; he looms permanently enormous in Castiel’s memories.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Charlie make a face at him — just a slight one, a widening of the eyes, but he stifles a laugh. It’s good to be reminded not to take his parents too seriously.

“Dad,” he returns, shaking his father’s hand.

The Stampede grounds are packed with people, the air rich with the mingled smells of fried food. The rodeo isn’t the only part of the festival — there are musical performances and circus acts, chuckwagon races and industry expositions — and the sheer volume of humanity is almost overwhelming. The crowds part instinctively in front of Castiel’s mother, though. Naomi’s always had a way of intimidating people.

Castiel feels a sudden rush of affection for Charlie, for her willingness to put up with all this as if it were normal. She helped him, this morning, eradicate any sign of Dean’s presence from his apartment. They washed the sheets and towels and made the bed, checked under every chair for discarded socks — but of course, Dean’s more fastidious than Castiel, he’s more likely to leave a book or a plate of food lying out than he is clothing. Then Castiel took a deep breath and deleted all the pictures of Dean from his phone. Just in case. There’s only a few of them, and they’re blurry, but he still uploaded them to his computer before eliminating any traces of them from anywhere his parents might see.

He considered deleting texts. He’d have hated to do it. Instead, he changed Dean’s name in his phone to Deanna. He rehearses possibilities in his head as they walk: he can wish Dean good luck with his ride, and pass him off as Jo’s friend, a barrel racer, if his mother asks; he can explain away any overly affectionate texts in their history, and thank God they haven’t gotten… too explicit. He’s already asked Charlie to bloat their own text history with gaming play-by-plays to discourage any curious parents from scrolling back in time. She complied with only a moderate eyeroll at his paranoid idiocy.

He’s essentially scrubbed his life clean of what is rapidly becoming the most important relationship in it, in favor of not ruffling the feathers of people he can barely stand in the first place.

He’s a little astonished Charlie hasn’t called him on his bullshit. It strikes him, suddenly, that it is deep bullshit indeed.

His parents haven’t even been to the condo yet, just took a taxi directly from the airport to their hotel before meeting Castiel and Charlie at Stampede Park. Castiel’s been a little worried about missing Dean’s ride — bareback is first on the program, as usual — but his mother is nothing if not punctual, and they find their seats with plenty of time to spare.

Castiel’s father is now pressing Charlie for details about her work as a programmer for one of Boston’s largest hospital networks, cautioning her not to neglect the start-up she runs on the side. He’s always had a strangely paternal attitude toward Charlie, fond and indulgent. Whether it’s because of their shared entrepeneurial bent or their nearly identical names, Castiel isn’t sure.

His mother, meanwhile, is interrogating him pleasantly, implacably, on the events of his life; his officemates, his advisor, the progress of his research. She inquires delicately after his social life — dwells briefly on Hannah, whose now-occasional conversation with Castiel he offers up in hopes of satisfying her — and raises her eyebrows delicately with a meaningful look toward Charlie. “Mom,” says Castiel, “no, you know we’re not like that,” and she sighs and looks away again.

Once she’s apparently satisfied that there’s nothing more to extract from Castiel, Naomi moves on to updating him on his siblings’ lives, in descending order of age. Michael’s finished adding a veranda to his new suburban pile of a house, and she doesn’t know _what_ Gabe gets up to with his evenings, but at least he and Kali have moved in together. Anna’s involving herself more directly in running her art gallery than Naomi thinks appropriate, and she’s too skinny again, but the dress she wore to the Stauntons’ fundraiser last month raised quite a stir, she’s in talks with several luxury retailers to replicate it for the mass market —

Castiel tunes her out. The rodeo is beginning; the first rider is in the chute. Unbidden, nerves flutter up through his chest.

This is it. Dean rides Grated Coconut today.

His mother’s voice drones on in his ear. _Affordable housing,_ she’s saying, in disapproving tones, and _drives the market_ and _tax burden_ and _well, your brother thinks,_ and Castiel doesn’t give a damn what his brother thinks, because the first two cowboys have ridden and departed the ring, and it’s a brown-black stallion in the chute, snorting and shivering with anticipation, and it’s Dean Winchester swinging over the bars and lowering himself onto its back.

“Next up,” the announcer is saying, and it’s no one Castiel knows, Clayton doesn’t make the cut for these big rodeos apparently, “we’ve got a buckin’ bronc rider from Claresholm, Alberta — Dean Winchester!”

_Funny,_ Castiel thinks, _that he changed his hometown,_ he didn’t notice that yesterday or the day before —

“He’s the one who works on the Harvelle ranch?” says Castiel’s father, leaning past Charlie to catch his eye. “She said she had an employee riding in the Stampede.”

Castiel’s throat is gummy, overtight. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, that’s him.”

“Oh, do you know him?” says Naomi, and Castiel responds, automatic, “A little,” and the gate flies open, and he loses all power of speech.

Dean on Grated Coconut is a summer storm. Boiling dark and low on powerful haunches, unwinding like a lightning-crack across the sky, and everyone in the arena must be as breathless as Castiel, everyone must be as overawed, because the spectacle before them is something more than human — more than flesh. It’s elemental, a tornado touching down, and for an instant Castiel believes, like he believes in language and gravity and the color blue, that man and horse are about to lift off the ground entirely; that the next buck will send them thundering through the sky, out past the city, out through the prairies, rolling over bluffs and down draws, swelling rivers, raising flowers, convulsing the earth in ecstasy —

— and then it’s over, and Dean’s on the ground and his face is shining, he’s pumping his fist in the air, and Castiel’s mother is saying, “He does seem happy. I suppose he’s done well. I have no idea how the judges score these rides, they all look like rag dolls to me —”

Castiel feels a sharp pinch on his thigh. He jumps, and looks down to see Charlie’s hand, then up at her face. She widens her eyes at him, and he realizes abruptly that he’s grinning like an idiot. Immediately, he schools his face into mildness, but his heart is still singing within him, and when the announcer says, “And Dean Winchester has topped Davey Shields Jr.’s record-setting performance on this horse last year, with a _ninety-five-point_ score!”

The crowd erupts around them. Charlie claps enthusiastically, Castiel’s parents politely, and he knows his own hands are performing their duty, moderate, unremarkable. But Dean’s still down there grinning, his face a shining beacon, and everyone’s looking at him on the screen, which is good, because none of them notice that Dean’s smile is directed like a lighthouse beam directly at Castiel.

\---

He passes most of the next twenty-four hours in a haze. He goes out to eat with his parents and Charlie; he stares at his phone, trying to compose a non-incriminating text of congratulations. All he can think is _I love you, I love you, I love you._ Dean doesn’t text him, and Castiel wonders if he’s out celebrating somewhere, if the other cowboys are buying him coconut drinks. He plans his own congratulatory meal, in two days when his family is gone. He daydreams — Dean winning his pool, Dean winning the grand prize. He’s got a seven-point lead now on the next guy behind him; if he just turns in decent rides the next two days, he’s all but guaranteed a spot in the semifinals, and then —

He lets himself picture it, just for a moment. Dean triumphant, his family’s money problems solved; Castiel running to meet him in the arena, locking Dean in his arms, and Dean kissing him, right there for the world to see. His parents’ faces in the stands, frozen with shock, and Castiel not caring, _not caring,_ because he has what he wants and he is who he needs to be —

He dispels the image with a flutter of paranoia. It’s bad luck, to imagine so boldly; it must be. He hugs his arms around himself and tempers his thoughts.

The next morning means cooking brunch for his parents. It’s his own fault — he invited them, somehow eager to show off what Dean’s taught him even though the idea of uttering Dean’s name in their presence sends him into nervous shivers. He makes pancakes and bacon and slices the fruit, and Charlie takes charge of mimosas. She makes them stronger than any of the Novaks are prepared for, with the result that they’re all a little drunk and tittering and getting along better than they almost ever do by the time they make their way back to the arena.

“I liked the steer wrestling,” Naomi admits, swaying slightly and clutching Castiel’s bicep for balance as they make their way to their seats. “I think I would be good at it.”

Jumping onto the horns of a charging 600-pound animal and convincing it that lying down in the dirt is its best, or only, option. “I think you’d be good at it too,” Castiel tells her.

She looks up at him fondly, eyes a little unfocused. “You’re a good son,” she says.

Castiel looks back at her with a lump in his throat. _Mom,_ he thinks, _I’m gay._

He doesn’t say it. He takes his seat and stretches his arm over her shoulder, more comfortable, more familiar, than they’ve maybe ever been. On her other side, his father looks relaxed, too, the blue sky a smiling reflection in his eyes. Charlie has disappeared somewhere — Castiel thinks she might have doubled back to flirt with the girl ushering rodeo attendees to their seats — but for a moment, he feels just fine without her; for a moment, he feels like part of a family.

He watches the bronc riders take their turns with a growing sense of anticipation. No one turns in a heroic ride in the nineties; it’s one serviceable performance after another, and Dean’s lead is holding, hell, he can ride an 84 and stay comfortable, just a nice solid ride on a nice solid horse, and he’ll be good to go.

That’s what he’s got on the slate today, anyway: Grand Marnier, out of Kessler, a six-year-old mare. A little sweet, a little fiery, a “nice little dame of a horse,” the announcer is saying, and Castiel doesn’t know who still uses words like dame, but that’s fine, it’s fine. She’s a light, pretty roan, dancing in the stall, and it takes Dean longer than usual to set himself, to get his rigging on tight, but that’s fine, too. Dean knows what he’s doing. He sets himself, resets himself, shoves his hat down low and gives the terse nod that means _ready_ and the gate flies open and —

— everything goes wrong.

It’s the rope, Castiel tells himself later, when he tries to understand what happened. It’s not a clean release; the mare’s hind leg catches and slides out from under her and she falls. Or almost falls. Her hindquarters wrench out from under her, and she lets out a high, panicked noise, and her side slams against the fence of the chute, and Dean goes down.

That’s what Castiel will piece together later, punishing himself, watching the footage in slow motion, over and over again. Now, he only sees that the mare doesn’t leap right and Dean is off her back and then she’s clear and bucking, her hoof catching Dean’s chest and slamming him back against the bars, and there’s blood, so much blood, and Dean’s not moving, just a crumpled heap, leather splayed out around him, and Castiel can’t see if he’s all right, he doesn’t know if Dean is even _alive,_ and he just wants the distance to be gone between them, all that obscuring clothing, he needs to see where the blood is coming from, if _Dean is all right_ —

There are people running in, dropping to their knees around him, obscuring Castiel’s view. For an instant, he hates them so brightly his eyes fill with spots; he’s pushing out of his seat.

Through a gap in the flurry of people surrounding him, he sees Dean stir.

It isn’t much. Just a feeble attempt to sit up, thwarted immediately by the EMTs. It’s something, though, and the crowd has seen it too, their collective exhale audible in the still air.

Castiel is still on his feet. His fists are still balled tight. Charlie’s grip is sharp on his arm.

He turns. The look in her eyes says: _I’m so sorry. But there’s nothing you can do. And you might hate me later if I let you act like you’re about to._

He takes a deep breath. There’s an ambulance driving into the arena; Dean’s lips are moving. The whole stadium watches as they load him inside.

From the corner of his eye, Castiel sees movement in the aisle below. It’s Ellen and Jo and Bobby, walking quickly, faces grim. His hands trembling, Castiel reaches for his phone. His parents’ gazes are still on the big screens, still watching the ambulance doors close, watching it roll back out the gate. He finds Jo’s contact. He thumbs in the letters without looking, one word:

_Please_

The rodeo continues. Castiel locks himself firmly into character; makes noises of vague assent when his mother exclaims over the violence of the sport, when his father qualifies that with something about proud Western traditions, the role of athletic competition in a culture’s sense of itself. He tries to give Charlie a smile when she shoots him a tiny, worried glance.

His phone buzzes. Jo’s answer. She says only, _I’ll let you know._

\---

There’s no news through the rest of the rodeo. No news through the drive to the restaurant, a steakhouse Castiel’s father claims is the best in town; no news as they order their wines and appetizers, and it should occur to Castiel to be grateful for Charlie, it really should, she keeps making strained conversation and sneaking him scared glances from under her bangs, but he’s — numb.

And there’s still no news.

It’s not until halfway through the main course that he feels his phone buzz against his thigh. He covers it with his palm, instinctive, muffling the slight noise. If it’s from Jo —

He can’t look at it at the table. He can’t face the possibilities with his mother’s eyes on him, with his father at his elbow. He says, “Excuse me,” and slides out of his place, leaving his napkin crumpled on his seat.

He doesn’t pull his phone out until he reaches the bathroom. Then, he locks the stall door behind him and leans bodily against the wall. The fabric of his jeans scrapes across his knuckles as he reaches into his pocket. He pulls out his phone with trembling hands, and flips it open.

_He just got out of surgery,_ the message reads. _He’s going to be okay._

Castiel stares at it for a full minute. He doesn’t know what to think, or feel; relief has short-circuited his brain. _Thank you,_ he types, with trembling fingers. He doesn’t know what else to say. _Thank you, thank you, tell him I love him, tell him I — I’ll be there as soon as I can —_

Before he can settle on anything, another text from Jo buzzes against his hand. _He’ll be asleep 4 a while. Visiting hours almost over. Come tmrw?_

Castiel nods to himself, breath shaking. He finishes his own message: _Thank you. I will._

Still, he hesitates before hitting send. _Tell him…_

In the end, he doesn’t ask Jo to tell Dean anything. He thumbs back to Dean’s contact, changes it back to his name. Then he types: _I love you. I’ll see you as soon as I can._

\---

He makes it through the rest of dinner. He makes it through dessert. He bids his parents goodbye, kisses his mother politely on the cheek and helps her into the cab, and weathers Charlie’s scared glances in the elevator in silence until they reach the apartment and he shuts the door behind him and sinks down, trembling, to the floor.

“Cas,” she’s saying, but it’s from a great distance, he barely feels her hands on his shoulders, his face. “ _Cas,_ what happened, is he okay —”

“He.” The word cracks out of his lips like a ghost. “He’s out of surgery. He will be.”

“Oh, but that’s _good,_ ” Charlie cries, and pulls him into a hug, and Castiel falls apart.

His lungs are heaving in great ragged sobs. There are tears pouring down his face, his nose is streaming, his chest _hurts_ and his jaw is clenched and his fingers dug tightly into his thighs, and he wants to _hit something,_ to _hurt,_ only Charlie’s got her arms wrapped around him and he can’t hit her. The sound coming from him is more animal than human, a throbbing, broken, drawn-out howl, and he can’t — he’s so —

He’s so _fucking awful,_ sitting there eating steak while Dean was in surgery, Dean doesn’t deserve someone like this, _no one_ deserves someone like this —

His mind is hemorrhaging, bleeding out at the corners. If this were a story, he’d realize suddenly that he’s been speaking his entire internal monologue out loud. He’s not. He’s sobbing too hard for that, breath coming in gasps, and if this were a story, Charlie would shush him, tell him it isn’t true, but it _is,_ and she knows it. He knows she knows it.

He should just. Just let Dean well enough alone.

But Dean tried to pull that on him once, and he — can’t. He won’t do the same.

“Hey,” Charlie is saying. “Hey — it’s good, right? He’s okay.”

Castiel nods, wordless. He can’t stop shaking. He can’t stop crying; every momentary lull gives way to another hiccuping sob, until Charlie just wraps him in her arms and puts her head on his chest and sways with him until he finally, finally cries himself empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [winces] ...I'm sorry.
> 
> This week's cowboy song is Corb Lund's [She Won't Come To Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vejHx4lAtGE); also, have some [poster art](https://www.calgarystampede.com/heritage/collections/2009) featuring Grated Coconut from 2009.


	10. Buckin' Horse Rider

Castiel wakes up the following morning with his pulse hammering, jaw tight and aching and his heart in his throat. He rolls over to discover that it’s only 5:10, and groans and spends several minutes trying to fall back to sleep before giving it up and shuffling out into the kitchen.

There’s some bacon left over in the fridge from his parents’ brunch. Castiel dumps it haphazardly into a pan, then lights the burner. He watches the blue flames dance on the stove for several minutes before he remembers to check his phone.

He has no new calls. No texts; but that doesn’t mean anything, surely. Dean wouldn’t have had his phone on him while he was riding. Its battery might be dead. It might still be in his locker at the Stampede grounds, if no one’s brought it to him yet.

The scene replays itself in horrifying color in Castiel’s mind. He shudders.

Jo said visiting hours were over; she didn’t say when they’d start again.

Castiel realizes he doesn’t even know which hospital they took Dean to. His heart shrivels with the shame of having to ask; of not having asked already. Would Jo be awake yet? Maybe, but —

His laptop is in the office, where Charlie is sleeping. On top of the fridge there’s a phone book, delivered one morning to everyone on his hall. He’s never opened it before. He pulls it down, wipes dust from the cover, and starts leafing through.

The third hospital he calls has Dean.

“Visiting hours aren’t ‘til eleven,” says the woman on the phone. She sounds both bored and annoyed.

“But —” Castiel starts.

He can _hear_ her raise her eyebrows over the phone. He swallows. “Thank you.”

His parents’ flight is at noon. His mother probably wants to buy him a coffee before they go; he remembers none of their conversation last night.

The bacon is burning in the pan. Castiel runs over to turn off the burner. It’s charred on one side, still pink on the other. He stares at it for several seconds, feeling a sob rising in his chest, then takes hold of himself and dumps the mess in the trash.

What the hell is he supposed to do now?

Charlie emerges a little shy of 7, yawning and rubbing her eyes, to find him sitting on the couch and staring blankly at the dark screen of the TV. She stops dead when she sees him, and he jolts and turns. Her hair is sticking up like a modernist sculpture.

“Cas. Did you sleep?”

He _did;_ that’s the worst thing. He shouldn’t have been able to. He should have —

“Cas,” says Charlie, gently.

He gets a hold of himself. “My,” he says. His throat is dry. “My parents. Are we meeting them for breakfast?”

“At 7:30. At their hotel.” Charlie hesitates. “If you don’t want —”

“I should go.”

Charlie looks him up and down. “You should _shower._ ” She hesitates. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“No,” says Cas, honestly, because — _okay_ doesn’t even sound like it lives on the same planet as he does. “But I’m —” He waves his hand vaguely, in a gesture that means something like _participating in linear time._

“Okay,” says Charlie, and Cas goes to take a shower.

When he gets out, she’s combed her hair and cleaned out the catastrophic frying pan, and she offers him a mug of coffee. “To tide you over,” she says, and he has only about five minutes before they need to leave, but he sucks half the mug down regardless.

The acid of it churns in his stomach. He’s not sure he isn’t going to vomit it back up in the elevator.

He tries to turn toward the door to the garage, when they reach the lobby. Charlie catches his elbow. “You’re not driving,” she says. “We’ll take a taxi.”

He thinks of objecting, and then thinks better of it.

When they pull up to the hotel lobby, Castiel’s father is standing just inside the glass doors, ear to his phone. He gives them a smiling wave and turns away, nodding seriously at whatever the person on the other end is saying. When Castiel hesitates, he motions them on inside, pointing toward the hotel’s restaurant. It’s green-carpeted and half-hidden behind a massive rock-slab fountain, every table frothing with artfully folded napkins in the soft light that suffuses down from the domed ceiling many floors above.

Naomi is sitting already with a glass of orange juice, looking like she selected her clothes to match the crisp white tablecloth and seafoam-green cushion of her chair. In contrast, Charlie’s hot pink shirt looks garish. She flips her hair as if she realizes it and tugs Castiel into a chair.

“Castiel,” says Naomi warmly, which makes him blink. He’d forgotten their mood of yesterday; forgotten anything from before that crack in time that now spiders through every memory in his head. _Before_ feels like a foreign country.

“Are you feeling any better? You seemed unwell last night. I thought those mussels looked questionable — I told your father, being so far from the ocean —”

Castiel has no memory of eating mussels. He shrugs, and doesn’t answer, because his mother’s already moved on to other things.

His sense of time slides, a little. Then Charles is pulling out the chair opposite him, looking tired as he takes his seat. “Well,” he says, “my meeting with Ellen Harvelle is off. She says she wants a second opinion from a lawyer on our contract, and that she won’t have time to review it in detail herself until September at the earliest, with that hand of hers out of commission —”

Castiel starts.

His knee knocks the underside of the table; silverware jingles, and his water slops in its glass. “What do you mean?”

Everyone is staring at him. “Castiel —” his mother starts.

“What do you mean, he’s out of commission?”

A moment of awkward silence passes. Naomi looks stunned, Charles chagrined. Then he says, slowly, “Well, Ellen didn’t say much. Just that he won’t be able to work for a while.”

 _For a while._ Castiel tries to breathe. Is that better than he thought? Worse?

“Will he be able to ride?” he asks, because it’s suddenly come crashing down on him. This isn’t just about Dean, though it should be; it’s about _money,_ the money he needs to keep winning to pay his father’s debts — to keep earning at the ranch —

“I have no idea,” his father says, still staring at him, and his mother cuts in, “Castiel, you look quite flushed, dear, are you sure you’re all right —”

“I’m fine,” says Castiel loudly, over the ringing in his ears.

There’s a beat more of awkward silence. Then Charles says, uncertainly, “Well, since I don’t have a meeting after all, I thought we could all go up to Banff for the day. I know your mother has been dying to tour the hotel there, and I already changed our flight so we’re not leaving until six —”

Castiel stands so quickly his chair almost clatters over behind him. “Actually,” he says, “I’m not feeling very well — I think you were right about the mussels, Mom, I’d better —”

Naomi rises too, more gracefully but almost as quickly. “Well then, we’ll stay with you, dear, don’t be —”

“No,” says Castiel. “Really, I’ll be fine. I’ll just — I’ll just spend the day sleeping anyway. You should go.”

“Well, at least let one of us take your car back to your building,” says Naomi.

“We took a cab,” supplies Charlie. “I don’t mind staying with Cas, Mrs. Novak, if you want to —”

“Oh, no, Charlene,” says Castiel’s mother over her, turning. “If we’re going, you must join us — I’d hate for you to have wasted your vacation without seeing any of the sights.”

Charlie gulps, turning wide eyes to Castiel. He meets her gaze, tries to make his eyes say, _Please?_

“I’d — love to, Mrs. Novak,” Charlie says weakly.

“Excellent,” says Charles, lifting his water glass. “Castiel, if you’d like us to —”

But Cas is already moving, making a beeline for the door at a walk so fast it’s almost a run. He’s not even lying, entirely; he _does_ feel like he could throw up. As he reaches the doors, he thinks he hears his father saying, “The mussels seemed fine to me —”

There’s a taxi right there on the street corner. Castiel slides into its seat without looking back.

He gives the driver the hospital’s address, closes his eyes, and prays.

\---

Visiting hours are still more than two hours away.

Castiel approaches the front desk anyway, but just by the look on the face of the woman sitting there, he knows she’s the same one he spoke to on the phone. She gives him a narrow look over her glasses, and directs him to the chairs in the lobby.

The TV overhead is playing some kind of morning sports program. Baseball highlights, something about a blockbuster hockey trade, and then it’s news from the Stampede. It shows barrel racing, bull riding, a few rounds of tie-down roping; then bareback comes on. The chyron reads, _Thrills and Spills at the Calgary Stampede._

Castiel can’t look away. There’s Dean, in excruciating slow-motion high-definition, his head whipping back as he hits the rails. There he is lying in the dirt, through a gap under an EMT’s arm — you can see his eyes are open, lips are moving. There he is being loaded into an ambulance, invisible in a cervical collar, strapped to a backboard.

The segment changes. Castiel stares blankly and sees nothing at all.

The voice at his right makes him start. It’s a nurse; she’s wearing pink scrubs with small black cartoon skulls printed in a stylized pattern. It doesn’t seem entirely appropriate for a hospital full of dying people, but what does he know. “Hey,” she says. “You look like you could use one of these. Or both.”

She’s holding out a mug of coffee and a hash brown in a little paper sleeve. “From the Tim’s across the street,” she says confidingly. “I don’t settle for the hospital bullshit.”

“I —” Castiel intends to politely refuse, but his stomach protests painfully; it’s operating on coffee and very little else, and his whole body feels shaky and chilled. “Thank you,” he says instead, taking the hash brown. The first bite is greasy, starchy heaven.

She holds out the coffee cup again, a little aggressively, like a parent trying to land a forkful of food in the mouth of an uncooperative child. Castiel dodges slightly and says, “I think I’ve had more than enough coffee already, to be honest.”

This seems to mollify her. She pulls open the lid and takes a noisy drink from the cup herself, then plops into the seat beside him. “I’m Emily.”

“Castiel,” says Castiel, because he isn’t sure what else to say. “Do you — work here?”

She gives him a look. It’s fair. It was a stupid question. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m not very —”

“Sports medicine,” she interrupts. “MRI tech. And don’t worry about it, you look like you’ve had a hell of a day. Waiting for visiting hours?”

Castiel startles. “How did you —”

She waves a hand in a way that seems to imply, _come on, keep up._ “Who you here for?”

“My — boyfriend.” The word comes out of Castiel’s mouth more simply, more naturally than he could ever have imagined. “He — came in yesterday. I couldn’t…”

“Hey man, I get it.” Emily glances at the front desk, then tilts her head closer and mutters, conspiratorially, “What’s his name?”

“Uh — Dean. Dean Winchester.”

“Win — wait. Hot guy? Kicked by a horse?”

Castiel flushes. “Uh, yeah.”

Emily gives him a long, assessing look. “Damn,” she says eventually. “Okay, he’ll be up on the third floor somewhere — I dunno what room. I’ll distract Regina, and you —”

“Hang on,” says Castiel desperately. “Don’t — please don’t tell anyone.”

She gives him a look that makes him feel like something lower than an insect. “Dude, I’m not an _idiot._ ”

Castiel tries and fails to muster a response. Before he can school his face into anything other than slack-jawed idiocy, she’s turning on her heel and sauntering up to the front desk. She leans low and smiles broadly at Regina, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Cas can’t tell what she’s saying, but she’s motioning behind her back — _Go, go!_

And so he goes.

He finds the elevator just down the hall from the front desk, but it’s still in view, so he keeps going until he finds a stairwell. The door bangs loudly behind him; the air smells vaguely of latex. He takes the steps two at a time.

The third floor is _enormous._

Castiel feels like he must stick out like a sore thumb, but no one pays him any mind. He goes down one corridor, then the next, and doesn’t see Dean in any of the rooms, but he’s too nervous to look for long. Some of the rooms have a second bed, and he can glimpse some of their inhabitants in passing, but others are behind curtains; how is he supposed to find Dean if he’s in one of those? A couple times, a patient’s eyes meet his as he peers through the door, and he hurries quickly on his way.

He’s beginning to feel as if the whole endeavor is doomed and he should retreat to the lobby before he gets kicked out of the hospital altogether, when he sees him.

Dean’s got a cannula under his nose and a bandage over half his head. His eyes are closed and bruised-looking, two raccoon hollows deep in his face. His chest is rising and falling regularly.

Castiel is struck by an immediate, overpowering urge to flee.

Before he can act on or reject it, though, Dean’s eyes flutter open.

They fix on Cas in the doorway in an instant, and his breath stops.

The look on Dean’s face, even under the bandage, the cannula, is one of naked gratitude. Relief. He looks at Cas like he’s an oasis in the desert, unlooked for, only dreamed of; he looks at Cas like he’s the only real thing in the world.

Cas opens the door.

He finds that he’s smiling, and there are tears in his eyes. “Hey,” he says, and Dean says, “Hey,” cracked and faint, and there’s a chair at his bedside and Cas is sitting in it, taking Dean’s hand in both of his and kissing it, saying, “Hey,” again, and, “you scared the shit out of me, Dean.”

Dean’s hand twists in his, and for a moment Cas thinks he’s trying to get free and starts to withdraw, but instead Dean cups his face awkwardly, presses a thumb against Castiel’s lips. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, me too.”

Castiel’s chest wells with too many things to say. _Don’t ever scare me like that again,_ but Dean will, that’s how he’s built, and Castiel loves him for it, _I’m so glad you’re okay_ but Dean’s not, _I’m so glad you’re alive_ but that’s a truth too immense and fundamental for words, _I love you, I was so scared, I love you._

“Fuckin’ hate hospitals,” says Dean, and Castiel almost laughs; it’s such a small thing, but it’s true, hospitals are awful. Only the way Dean says it is small, vulnerable, like a confession, and so Castiel kisses his hand again, the heart of his palm, instead.

Dean shivers, and then winces with pain. “Had a guy in here last night,” he says, with a glance toward the other bed, half-hidden behind the curtain, now empty. “Had some sort of — drain they kept talking about. Never saw him. Gave me the fucking creeps.”

It’s a clear attempt at humor, bravado stretched thin to breaking, so Castiel smiles. “Sounds hard to sleep through.”

“ _Hospitals,_ man. Can’t ever fall asleep. And when you finally do, they start poking and prodding and taking your vitals all over again — Cas.” He cuts himself off abruptly. His face looks scared, and so fucking young. “I kept thinking, what if I never —”

 _It’s okay,_ Cas wants to tell him, and _I’ve got you,_ and _I love you,_ and he suddenly stills, because that’s — that’s the point of this, isn’t it.

“Dean,” he says, and his voice comes out low, almost forbidding, “if you are trying to talk _deathbed love confessions_ with me here, so help me God —”

Dean colors. “I _do,_ okay? Just because I —”

“I _don’t care,”_ says Castiel. He can feel the anger blooming red across his face. “I don’t _fucking_ care. You think I’d be okay with you dying if I knew you _loved_ me first? Of all the stupid asshole —”

“Well, I love you anyway,” snaps Dean, ears flaming. “I love you. Okay?”

“Fine,” says Castiel.

“Fine.”

For a moment, they merely glare at each other.

Then Dean starts laughing.

Castiel can’t help but join in, circling Dean’s fingers in his own, ribs shaking with it. But then, Dean’s gasping with pain and quelling his laughter, and Castiel sits up sharply, glancing around for a nurse call button, in case this is —

“Hurts,” Dean gasps through a spasm, breath stuttering. “Laughing — fuckin’ broken ribs.” His face is taut now, humor gone.

Castiel feels reality drop into his stomach like a stone. “Ellen said you’d be out of commission for a while.”

Dean looks up sharply. “You talked to Ellen?”

The guilt that Castiel’s managed to temporarily forget twists back into his gut with a vengeance. “My dad did.”

But Dean’s mouth quirks. “This is fuckin’ weird.” Before Castiel can comment, though, a graver expression replaces it. “Hey. Can I ask — next time you visit, can you bring your laptop?”

“Of course,” says Castiel, immediately. “But — why?”

“Gotta start looking for a job.”

Castiel blinks. “Ellen’s _firing_ you?”

Dean lets out a snort, then immediately winces. “Ellen’s trying to keep my useless ass on at full pay. But I’m looking at six weeks recovery, minimum, and by then I’ll be out of the rodeo standings for sure. Gotta find something where I can make bank for a few months, try and get my dad that money for Sammy. Oilpatch jobs pay pretty good, and I can weld, so that’s —” He breaks off coughing, face twisting with pain, and Castiel’s gut wrenches at his own helplessness. “That’s something,” Dean finishes weakly.

The hatred of his own uselessness is pounding in Castiel’s veins. “I could —” he starts, but he already knows that he couldn’t; that even if he could sell everything he owns and sign over his grad student salary to Dean, it wouldn’t be nearly enough; that he could try to get the money from his father but it would never fly, Charles is a notoriously tight-fisted businessman and even more scrupulous a parent; that Dean isn’t going to accept his charity regardless, because he’s a stubborn ass of a man, and Dean confirms that by interrupting, “No fuckin’ way, Cas.”

Castiel sighs. “All right. Just — let me help, okay? If there’s anything I _can_ do. Let me. Please.”

Dean sighs, and then his brow furrows. “Wait. I thought you still had your parents today.”

“I ditched them,” Castiel admits. “They’re taking Charlie to Banff.” He feels guilty as he says it. There’s no reason he couldn’t have ditched them last night; there’s no reason he couldn’t have _been_ here. Just his own paralyzing fears.

“Cas,” says Dean.

“You don’t hate me for it? Not even a little bit?” The words burst out of him unintended, and all the more searing for it.

“What? Dude, no.” For a moment, Dean sounds like he could be anywhere, shooting the shit with another cowboy over a glass of beer. And Castiel sees all over how frail he looks, how ill at ease, in his hospital gown and IV tube; how small and fragile and remarkable a human body is, even one as full of life as Dean’s. He thinks of Dean’s brother’s hands around his throat, and finds his own are trembling.

Then the door to the room is opening and Ellen is there, Jo behind her, and Dean’s giving them a tired, overstretched smile, and Castiel hides his shaking hands and does his very best to smile too.

\---

Dean has three broken ribs, a recently reinflated lung, a skull fracture, and a concussion.

“A _skull fracture?_ ” Castiel repeats, lurching upright. “Are you —”

“He’ll be fine,” says Ellen, implacably. “It’s a simple, closed fracture; the bone will heal normally. He just needs rest and pain management.”

“‘Sfine, Cas,” Dean mumbles, reaching for his hand. He looks weaker and more exhausted still, like talking to Cas has drained his resources nearly dry; he looks like he hasn’t slept in a week. And it’s _not_ fucking fine, because even if Dean is on the path to bounce back physically, even if he has no lasting impact from any of this, it’s still fucked up his life irreversibly — he’s still out of the rodeo for the rest of the year, still talking about leaving the only place he really has to call home —

“Breathe, kid,” Ellen says quietly, and Castiel tries.

Jo’s been sitting in a corner, not saying much. Her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy. Her chin is in her hands, and she won’t look directly at him.

Castiel thinks he might finally have an ally in his self-hatred.

He opens his mouth to say something. But Ellen raises a finger to her lips, and tilts her chin toward the bed, and Castiel turns to see that Dean is sleeping at last.

Jo glances at Ellen, who nods; both of them make their quiet way to the door.

Castiel moves to follow them, but as he tries to withdraw his hand, Dean’s fingers tighten around it. He hesitates.

Understanding softens Ellen’s weathered features. “We’ll be back later,” she murmurs. “With food.”

Castiel nods, and the door closes, and leaves them in peace.

Dean sleeps fitfully. He doesn’t move, much — every toss or turn thwarted by a ripple of pain that sends a grimace flashing over his face, like a fish in a shadowed pool — and even when it doesn’t, his face spasms regularly with unease, eyelids flickering, muscles tightening like wires. Castiel’s heart aches, and his hand aches too, because Dean keeps gripping it tight.

After a while, the nurse comes in to take Dean’s blood pressure and his oxygen, and he blinks fitfully awake.

The bruising around his eyes has darkened still further. The nurse clicks her tongue and offers him an ibuprofen tablet that looks big enough for a horse, and Dean swallows it without complaint.

“How long am I in here for, anyway?” he asks her, voice creaking painfully from disuse.

“Sorry, honey, that’s a question for your doctor,” says the nurse.

“I haven’t _met_ my doctor,” Dean grumbles, after she’s gone. “Or — I guess I have, but —” he stops, scowling. “Cas, concussions suck.”

“Hey,” says Castiel, suddenly needing to voice it out loud. “On Grated Coconut. You were — spectacular.”

Dean smiles. It makes the lines around his eyes crinkle; it makes his skin look faded and thin. “Yeah,” he says. “I was.”

\---

Castiel has never been sick, not really. He’s never been hospitalized, never been seriously injured, never had much more than the common cold or a stomach flu or pneumonia, once in college. All of which was miserable, certainly, but it wasn’t — like this.

The hospital exists as some kind of liminal space, time and the city a faint flicker of lights on some distant horizon. Dean sleeps, and wakes, and mostly does something halfway in between, and when he and Ellen bully Castiel into stretching his legs, some hours later, he’s startled to find it’s still bright daylight outside.

He has a text on his phone from Charlie: _Dropping your parents off at the airport. They send love. Want me to come by?_

 _Please,_ he answers. _Can you bring my laptop?_

She’s there an hour later or so, with his laptop and a deck of cards, and they pass the evening playing while Dean does some research and dozes off again, computer slipping sideways off his lap. Jo rescues it before it can hit the floor, and returns it to Cas with a tentative half-smile, like she’s thinking about maybe forgiving him. It’s kind of her. He looks away.

Ellen goes out again for food for all of them, but around eight thirty, with Dean’s eyelids sagging again and his smile growing weary, she claps her hands and looks around at the four of them and says, “All right. Dean, I’m going to go get your boyfriend drunk. He needs it, and you need to rest. Everyone good here?”

Which is how, an hour later, Cas finds himself in the outdoor patio seating of a bar only a few blocks from his apartment, a line of shots in front of him and all three women staring him down.

“Kid,” says Ellen, “I’m only gonna say this once.”

Castiel starts.

“ _None_ of this is your fault,” Ellen continues, face stern. “I don’t know what your family shit is like; it’s none of my business, unless you want it to be. But I know I respect your dad well enough as a businessman, and I’d drop my own kid in a tank full of sharks before I’d give her up for him to raise.” She raises her shot glass. “No offense meant.”

The flush starts in Castiel’s gut. It washes his face beet-red. He has no idea what to say.

“I’m not Dean’s mom,” Ellen continues, “but I figure I’m the closest thing he’s got, and if you want my approval — well. You got it, okay?

“I — th-thank you,” Castiel stutters.

Ellen grimaces. “Enough sentimental bull-crap. Let’s get drunk.”

Castiel leans back to down his shot in a single gulp. As he does, out of the corner of his eye, he sees two women walking down the street. They look vaguely familiar, but it’s not until he’s set his glass back down that he places them: Emily the MRI tech, looking sleek in all-black, and the angry receptionist — Regina. She doesn’t look angry now. She’s laughing, head tipped back, hair falling around her shoulders. As they pass, Castiel sees Emily grin broadly as Regina slips her hand into her back pocket.

They’re going to be okay. Somehow, they’re going to be okay.

There’s another whiskey shot on the table in front of him. Castiel throws it back, too, and Charlie whoops in surprised delight. He offers her the best smile he can. He doesn’t fucking deserve her. Or maybe he does, and needs to loosen up a little with all this self-loathing shit anyway. Ellen’s smiling at him. Even Jo is smiling.

Maybe he does deserve them. Maybe he does deserve — happiness, or something — acceptance. Maybe he deserves all the things that he would wish for Dean, and that he knows Dean wants for him.

“I’ll get the next round,” Castiel tells the table, and goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for today is [Buckin' Horse Rider](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDHy7qzTY-g), in honor of those who can't currently do what they love.


	11. 'Til September

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sneaking a November update in under the wire! I hope you enjoy.

When Dean’s discharged from the hospital, a few days later, he moves his scant duffel of possessions and his folder full of paperwork and strict medical instructions into Castiel’s apartment.

It doesn’t make sense for him to go back to the ranch, just yet; there’s nothing for him to do there, and he has follow-up appointments at the hospital. He insists on driving himself to those — “I’m hurt, Cas, I’m not dead” — and going grocery shopping and doing the cooking, more inventive every day.

The deep bruised shadows under his eyes linger. It’s a skull fracture symptom, apparently, and it makes it hard to tell how he’s doing, underneath; hard to recognize the subtler twitches in the muscles of his face. He’s got a prescription for Vicodin that he refuses to fill, insisting to Cas every time he raises it that he’s fine, the pain is nothing, even when he wakes up gasping in the middle of the night.

Still, it’s — not bad. Dean laughs a lot, careful of his ribs, and picks out movies, and lets Cas blow him on the couch, hands in his hair, whimpering from the frustration of lying still. It isn’t until the weekend that Cas finds time to cook his coconut meal — despite his best efforts to make Dean sit still, he helps — and Dean sits to eat it with a fond smile in his hollowed-out eyes.

He declares every last element a religious experience. The curry and the cake don’t really go together, Cas apologizes, and Dean smacks him lightly and tells him he’s an idiot.

Dean bullies Cas into bed afterwards, murmuring a non-stop stream of the filthiest things he can think of, needy and imperious by turns. Anything rhythmic with his hands won’t work, with the broken ribs, and Castiel flat-out refuses to fuck him, but Dean manages to worm his way between Cas’s legs and get his mouth on his cock and, Jesus, between that and the words he’s choking around it, Cas finally cracks. He fucks deep and slow into Dean’s mouth, presses him down until he’ll lie _flat,_ stop straining his ribs, and Dean moans greedy encouragement around him.

It’s a surreal kind of torture, trying not to lose himself in the wet-hot perfection of Dean’s mouth, trying not to jostle him, trying to _satisfy_ him, and Dean’s practically deep-throating him by the time he comes, still humming his enthusiasm. Castiel rolls off him on rubbery knees, wrung out, and Dean sits up to take him in, flushed chest and sweat-damp hair.

His lips are puffed and smooth, perfection. His eyes are shining. He looks more like himself — more alive — than he has in days.

It’s good, maybe, for the circumstances. The two of them like this. It still can’t last.

Dean’s spun-thin, brittle. Castiel sees it in the hunch of his shoulders when he doesn’t think anyone is watching, in the way his eyes linger on small, meaningless things, cupboard corners, a dark scuff on the floor. At first, he thinks it’s the injury — the little trials of recovery, the pain.

It gets worse with time, though, not better. On Tuesday, Dean says, “Cas — I gotta get back to the ranch.”

He looks guilty about it. Castiel feels something jealous and protective flare between his ribs. Against his better instincts, he asks, “Do they actually think they’re going to put you to work? Already?”

It comes out demanding, almost petulant, and Dean looks down. He scuffs his foot lightly on the floor. “No. I just — I can’t —”

He stops, and scowls, as if he can’t find the words and is furious with it. Abruptly, Castiel’s selfishness abandons him.

This isn’t about Castiel, or desire, or rejection. There are just — there are places people _belong._ This isn’t it, for Dean.

He’s not sure it’s it for him either.

“I’ll come down on weekends,” he says. He tries to put the apology in his voice. “If you’d like me to, I mean.”

Dean’s gaze snaps up, uncomfortably grateful. “I’ll come up, too,” he says, “I mean, I’m not saying I won’t, just —”

Castiel kisses him, hard, to shut him up.

\---

So that’s how it goes for a while. Weekends at the ranch, and Dean in his bed two or three nights a week. He seems happier this way, sits with his bare feet on the ottoman and Castiel’s computer in his lap. He fiddles with his resume, and makes phone calls, and bakes a cherry pie.

He insists on walking, when they’re at the ranch, sometimes for miles — “gotta keep my strength up, Cas” — but he wears out quickly. They learn to walk in the river valley, where it’s shaded and flat, and there are downed trees to sit on when Dean needs to stop and rest. Only once does Castiel seriously consider going back to the ranch for help, when Dean’s out of breath and light-headed, leaning back against a poplar trunk, not really answering Castiel’s questions about whether he’ll be all right to make the walk home. Only when Castiel’s announcing his intentions loudly, half out of the clearing, do his eyes fly open. “I’m _fine,_ ” he declares, and levers himself upright, and refuses to stop his furious steps all the way back to the ranch house, even when he needs to lean heavily on Castiel’s arm.

Floss goes with them, most days. She’s pregnant, and starting to get round and heavy with it, but it doesn’t seem to slow her down. She slithers through the bushes, nodding red now with rosehips, and never seems to catch the silky hair of her tail in their thorns.

They learn where the beaver lodge is, and where the eagles have their nest. They watch flotillas of ducks on the roiling, blue-green current. The bunkhouse gets hot in the days, now, and Dean keeps his windows open at night, insects buzzing against the screens.

He keeps a folded up blanket next to his bed, for Floss to sleep on. Castiel suspects, from the hair on the bed, that she’s been curling up next to Dean when Cas isn’t around.

It’s not like Dean’s unhappy. Not — exactly.

It’s just that the seams between the happy moments are rougher, yawning wider. Whatever’s underneath is churning harder, like it’s only recently awake.

Dean dreams, a lot. It might be, Castiel thinks, that the pain keeps him from slipping into deep sleep. At first, he thinks that the tossing and turning is pain, too, but Dean’s grinding his teeth in his sleep, alternating between rigid stillness and thrashing so hard that, more than once, he nearly expels Castiel from the bed.

It helps, Cas being there, he thinks — when he wakes up in time, he can smooth gentle hands over Dean’s shoulders, his hips, pull him close, and Dean will steady and quiet. Other times, it takes more effort, and Dean doesn’t calm until his eyes fly open, breathing hard. Once, he wakes Castiel up by sitting straight up in bed, in the middle of the night, and declaring, in a deep, sleep-rough voice, _“NO.”_

Dean says he doesn’t remember the dreams. Eventually, Cas believes him, mostly because the blank space seems to haunt him; mostly because Dean seems to hate being tormented by something he can’t see.

He’s drinking more. Usually when Castiel’s not around, and never, it seems, to excess, but there are whiskey bottles empty in the kitchen recycling more often than Castiel remembers. A couple times, when Dean wakes up in the middle of the night, he reaches automatically for the nightstand, hand curving as if to fit around a glass. He seems to stop when he remembers that Cas is there.

“I’m no good at being useless,” he deflects, when Cas tries to ask. “I promise, Cas — I’m fine.”

He isn’t fine. He’s holding hard to the good, putting on the best face he can muster, but — more and more every day — he’s not fine.

It’s early August — prairie grasses bleached blonde, the shrubs by the river already starting to change color in some subtle way Castiel can’t quite name — when he arrives at the bunkhouse on a Saturday morning and finds Dean curled with his knees to his chest in the corner, a whiskey bottle in his hand.

He’s next to his nightstand, shoulder jammed against it, back pressed hard to the wall. He looks up as Castiel comes in, slack-mouthed, and his legs twitch, as if to stand; as if to find some way to pass this off as nothing. Castiel can see the exact moment he gives it up as a lost cause, and goes still.

“Dean?” he asks, uncertain.

There’s sunlight streaming through the open windows. It’s ten in the morning already — Castiel worked late in the lab last night, and compensated by sleeping in. Floss and Asa are both off somewhere working; there’s no sign of Ellen or Bobby. The yard is quiet.

“Dean,” says Castiel again. Dean’s eyes are red.

He doesn’t move. He says, “I’m okay,” like it’s a granular fact Cas needs to know; like the bottom line is the only thing that matters. He doesn’t sound drunk.

“I’m not — I haven’t been — I was just thinking about it,” he says, and sets down the bottle on the floor.

Castiel comes to sit, cautiously, on the bed. He doesn’t think he should come closer; doesn’t think he should cut off Dean’s line of escape. “Did something happen?”

“No. Yes.” Dean snorts out a weak laugh. “I got a job offer.”

_But that’s good_ dies halfway to Castiel’s lips. “What job?” he asks instead.

“Alberta oilpatch. Up north. Basic roughneck gig.” The words are automatic, unemotional. “I applied for welder, and they said they liked me, but they couldn’t take me ‘cause I don’t have a certificate. Offered me this instead.”

“Can you get a certificate?”

“Costs money. Too much.” Dean’s mouth flexes around the words, almost a smile, like it hurts to get them out. “And I don’t have the time. It’s — shit, Cas, even with the _per diem_ up in Fort Mac, even if I save everything I can — it doesn’t pay enough. It wouldn’t pay enough in US dollars. With the conversion —”

He cuts himself off, sharply. The smile persists, hovering on the edge of a grimace. Castiel opens his mouth.

“It’s not about that,” Dean says abruptly. His tone is hard, almost derisive. “I’m not — that was three days ago. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It’s not why I’m sitting here. I’m sitting here ‘cause I’m too scared out of my mind to fucking move.”

The disgust breaks through on the last word. It comes out like a snarl; it comes out like an accusation. Dean turns his head, jerky, to glare into Castiel’s eyes. _Well,_ he seems to be saying, _you know how pathetic I am — why don’t you leave?_

Castiel feels his stomach churn, tighten. This is it — this is the thing in the dark. And he has no fucking idea what to do.

He says, “You don’t have to move.”

The fine trembling starts in Dean’s hands. He clenches them on his knees, as if to make it stop, but it only spreads. His shoulders are shaking. His teeth chatter, once, before he locks them together. He draws a great, hard, breath, then another.

Castiel doesn’t know what instinct is guiding him. Every muscle in his body wants to go to Dean, to draw him close, to tell him it’s okay, it’s okay. But he waits.

“I didn’t used to fucking be like this,” Dean bites out.

The words shake from him like something seismic; like the strain’s finally become too much to hold. Tears sting the corners of Castiel’s eyes; he wants to _fix_ it, he wants to —

“I should never have copped out,” Dean says, and he’s crying now, rough, angry sobs, more air than tears. “I should never have left — my dad did better when I was there, even if Sam didn’t, he wouldn’t’ve — gone off the rails like — and Sam _did_ do better, too, even if it — and I just left them to each other. Just _fucking ran._ ”

Cas isn’t sure if he should say it. But the need is pulsing hard inside his ribs, imperative, and his voice comes out deep when he opens his mouth, raw with emotion. “I am so, so grateful you did.”

Dean snorts. He gestures at himself, viciously. “‘Cause this is so much better?”

“Yes,” says Castiel.

The word seems to take the wind out of Dean’s sails. He goes perfectly still, for a moment, then lets out an immense, shuddering breath. His eyes are pointed straight forward, glassy. His hands are still clenched on his knees.

“I did a little Googling,” he admits, after a moment. His voice is even, suddenly, if scraped hollow. “When you were at work. I took it off your browser history, after. About PTSD.”

Castiel stays very still.

“They said you can sometimes have — flashbacks to, like, the way you felt. When — whatever-it-was was happening.”

“Is that how this feels?” Cas asks, as calmly as he can, when Dean doesn’t go on.

“No. I — I don’t know. I never felt this scared.”

“Maybe you couldn’t,” says Cas, following the instinct that’s gotten him this far. “Maybe you — had to be strong, because there was no other choice. Maybe you’re only letting yourself grasp the magnitude of it now.”

Dean laughs, humorless. “If you’re right,” he says, “being strong felt a hell of a lot easier.”

Cas swallows. _Have you thought about talking to someone_ won’t go over well; not right now, maybe not ever. He knows Dean well enough to know how he’ll take it. _You’re too fucked up for me to deal with. If you can’t get yourself together enough to go to a real professional, stop wasting my time._

“I’d like you to tell Ellen and Bobby,” he says, slowly, instead.

Dean startles, slightly. “Tell ‘em what? That my brother fucked up, that my dad fucked up, that it fucked me up? They know that, Cas.”

“They don’t know the details,” Cas says steadily. “I think they need to. I think _you_ need to stop believing that the stuff you’re dealing with is a waste of everyone’s time.”

“Sure feels like a waste of mine,” Dean mutters, but there’s no venom in it. He just sounds tired.

“Hey.” Castiel reaches out, brushes his fingers over the back of Dean’s hand, where it’s still clutching his knee. For a moment, he thinks Dean won’t respond; then, abruptly, Dean’s hand turns over, fingers clamping over Castiel’s like a vice.

Castiel grips back. Dean’s body shudders; the sobs are coming again, dry and wrenching. They build, plateau, and slowly, slowly die out.

“I’m going to make you some tea,” Castiel tells him, “okay?” He’s never seen Dean drink tea, but there’s some in the kitchen, presumably Asa’s. The tea doesn’t matter anyway. It’s the ritual of it, the implication that someone knows what to do. It’s what Charlie’s done for him, more times than he can count. “You can come with me if you want, or you can stay here. Either one’s fine."

It takes a moment, but Dean nods, releases his grip. Castiel’s fingers are numb. He leans down to brush a brief, soft kiss over Dean’s forehead, and goes.

\---

Dean edges out of his room when the water’s halfway to boiling. His eyes are still angry and red-rimmed, but he’s shrugged on a flannel over his t-shirt, as if to signal that he’s rebuilt his walls, a little. It’s a green that softens the colors of pain on his face.

Castiel makes him peppermint tea, because everyone likes peppermint, and Dean wraps the mug in both hands like they’re cold. He sits on the edge of the couch to drink it, slowly, blowing on the surface of the hot liquid. Castiel pours himself a cup, too, and comes to sit next to him.

Dean’s rigid posture wavers, for a moment, then melts, seeking his warmth. “Do you think,” he says, and then, “after dinner?”, and it takes Cas a moment to realize he’s talking about Ellen and Bobby.

“Yes,” he says, “I think that would be perfect,” and Dean nods, and drinks his tea.

\---

They spend the rest of the day driving, noting places the fence needs repair.

Dean’s healed up enough that he can handle the jostling. He’s also teaching Castiel to drive the UTV, which he says means it doesn’t matter anyway, because Cas drives like someone’s grandmother, creeping over potholes and negotiating boulders in the road as if they might leap up to bite at any moment. Cas laughs, and watches Dean scribble down notes on his yellow pad, incomprehensible — _“2x ovr turkey rdg N side”_ — even though Cas is pretty sure there are no turkeys in this part of Alberta and would not for the life of him have characterized the gentle swell of land they just crossed as a ridge.

He’s not sure why he feels so certain about this. He’s not sure how to bring it up with Ellen and Bobby in the first place, whether Dean will do that or if he should step in. He just knows — Dean’s walking around carrying a load the size of the Chrysler building, and convincing himself everyone agrees that’s just what he’s good for; that’s all he’s worth.

It’s fucking not. But if Dean won’t let anyone see it, they’ll never have a chance to tell him otherwise.

At dinner, Dean looks increasingly nervous. His foot is jittering on the floor; he casts an anxious glance at Castiel, once, almost pleading, as if to say, _Can we just — not?_

Cas just looks at him. Dean sighs, and pokes at his food.

Asa’s being gracious enough not to notice the tension the air. Jo’s in Calgary for the night, visiting friends. Ellen and Bobby glance at each other, a few times, as the meal gets more awkward, but leave well enough alone.

By the time Cas’s plate of food is empty and Dean’s is — atypically — half gone, Asa’s excusing himself politely, pushing his chair back in and taking his dishes with him when he stands. He clatters briefly in the kitchen, rinsing his plate and putting it in the dishwasher, and then he’s fading back through the dining room and out the front door into the night.

Dean’s staring down at his uneaten potatoes. He looks a little sick.

“Cas thinks I should talk to you,” he says, roughly, almost before the screen door has finished banging closed. “About Sam.”

Ellen puts down her fork with a sharp _clink._ Bobby says, “About damn time.”

“I mean,” says Dean, backpedaling almost immediately, “it’s not like there’s anything you can do about —”

“Shut up and talk, boy,” Ellen says. She sits back, pushing up her sleeves to the elbows.

Castiel hesitates, then puts his napkin on the table, sliding his chair back. “I’ll give you,” he says, and catches Dean’s eye to confirm; Dean nods, looking grateful, but then blurts, “Will you — stay close? Like —” He falters.

“I’ll be on the porch,” Castiel offers, and at Dean’s nod, he goes.

They talk for a long time.

Castiel closes the door behind him; he doesn’t intend to eavesdrop. The windows are open, though, and occasional phrases filter through the buzz of the crickets and katydids out in the grass. _After Jess called,_ Dean’s saying, and, _Dad decided around February,_ and, _no, I think it was this kid Brady — one of those ski-lodge rich kids —_

After a while his voice goes higher, rougher, the words more uneven. Their cadence blends with the sounds of the night, and it’s easier to tune them out. Still, there are some Castiel can’t miss: _I, uh, had to stop him physically,_ and, _no, kind of a lot_ —

_He was dying,_ he says once, voice breaking, into a sudden hush in the night. _I couldn’t let him die, Bobby. I couldn’t. He’s my brother._

A wave of hot rage surges out of nowhere, and leaves Castiel’s lungs tight and aching. He looks around for something he can punch, tear, destroy; there’s nothing. He clenches his fingers hard in the fabric of his jeans.

Once, there’s a loud crash, like a chair clattering to the floor. “I am going to fucking _murder John Winchester,_ ” snaps Ellen, voice ringing loud in the night, and Bobby’s rises in counterbalance, indistinct.

“It’s not like it’s his —” Dean tries.

“Every fucking _inch_ of this is his fault,” Ellen snaps. “If he’d raised you boys like _children,_ instead of —”

Her voice drops abruptly as she turns back away from the window. Castiel doesn’t need to hear Dean’s reply to know it’s dismissive, that he’s rolling whatever blame there is right back around to himself.

It’s something, though. All of this is — something. A step.

When the door finally creaks open, Dean stands there for a moment, swaying, body edged in gold from the flare of the dining room light. “Hey,” says Castiel, scrambling to his feet. His leg’s fallen asleep; he stumbles. “Are you okay?”

Dean nods vaguely. He takes another step, and the door swings loudly closed behind him. He’s moving slowly, like a man in a dream. He looks light, almost peaceful, but — drained. Hollowed out.

Castiel feels, absurdly, that it’s a good thing Dean asked him to wait; that he needs an anchor for this walk across the yard. That a light breeze might blow him away.

“Yeah,” he says, suddenly, recollecting himself. “Yeah — thanks, Cas.”

Castiel reaches out to take his hand.

It’s almost as if Dean’s mass returns to him, as they make their way across the yard to the bunkhouse. His eyes begin moving again, rather than staring blankly toward the horizon; his gait regains its bow-legged sway. On the steps, he turns to Castiel and says again, more fervently, “Cas — _thanks._ ”

“Dean,” says Cas. He’s been holding something to himself, too — something he suddenly can’t anymore. He hates the words, more than a little, as they drop from his lips. “I talked to Gabriel. My brother. He runs HR for the firm. I didn’t say anything specific, just that — I have a friend who’s looking for work as a welder.”

He swallows. Dean’s eyes are perfectly still on his face. “They’re hiring. I haven’t asked yet, but Gabriel hates — ‘bureaucratic bullshit hoop-jumping,’ he’d call it. If you applied, with a recommendation from Bobby instead of a certificate, he’d probably hire you out of pure spite.”

For a long moment, Dean is silent. Utterly still. “Gulf work,” he says.

It’s the only region — so far, at least — Novak Energy operates. Castiel swallows. “Yes.”

Dean’s eyes are still boring into him. They look strangely clear, strangely focused. Sometimes, Castiel thinks, when you’ve done something hard, for a brief window, everything else becomes easy.

“Okay,” says Dean, and turns to lead the way into the house.

\---

In less than two weeks, it’s done. Paperwork processing, salary agreed on, start date set. Cas leans hard on Gabriel, talks Dean up; after a while, Gabe goes oddly quiet, then says, when Castiel finally shuts up, _Sure, little brother. I’m — guessing this is something you’d rather I not mention to Dad._

Cas has no fucking idea what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything at all.

Dean actually has to dig through a duffel bag in his closet to find his social security card; he doesn’t remember the number. “We sort of,” he says, and tips a hand vaguely in the air, “weren’t always — here we go.” He gives Cas a rueful look. “Haven’t been big on above-the-board jobs. Historically speaking.”

Castiel knows that Ellen bullied Dean into doing his temporary agricultural worker visa right a few years ago; that before that, he wasn’t on any kind of health plan. He avoids thinking about Dean falling off broncos and breaking bones and making his own splints, shaking off the EMTs. He says, “Are you sure you’ll be ready?”

They still have a month. Late September. Castiel still doesn’t quite believe it: the impending separation, Dean’s apparent willingness to accept something that might feel two doors down from charity. Never mind the idea of Dean’s newly healed body, wrestling with — big metal things, in the middle of Atlantic storms —

Castiel should really have a better idea of what’s actually involved in the work of his own family’s company. _Your lung collapsed,_ he wants to say. _You had a crack in your skull._

The words lie heavy underneath his tongue, unspoken. This is his own doing, and even if it weren’t, it’s Dean’s choice.

“Not too much of an alternative.” Dean flexes his arm experimentally against the bag’s weight. He looks pleased with the outcome. “Hey — you up to taking the girls out for a ride today? For old times’ sake?”

He only got cleared by his doctor this morning, and he’s been humming all day with it. Cas knows he’s been visiting the horses daily, brushing them with slow strokes until their coats gleam, murmuring against their noses, but — this is different.

Castiel can’t quite hide the fond, ludicrous smile that spreads across his face. As if there was any question of doing anything else.

“I don’t know,” he says, seriously, “I was thinking it might be fun to help Ellen on that trip to town —”

Dean’s eyes widen. Ellen’s a notoriously angry shopper; Bobby usually drives into Claresholm for whatever they need from the supermarket and the UFA farm supply. Yesterday, though, Ellen’s last pair of her favorite work jeans bit the dust. That means _clothes_ shopping. That means that by evening she’ll be on a full-blown rant about the hips on men’s sizes and the pockets on women’s; about so-called “work” wear; about —

“Oh, my God,” says Dean, fervent. “I thought for a moment you weren’t kidding.”

“Of course we’re going for a ride,” says Cas, “you absolute dumbass,” and Dean steps swiftly into his space and kisses him and says, “Get your _hat._ ”

\---

The aspens are already beginning to turn gold, in wide swaths; the poplars in the river valley won’t be far behind. The wolf willows are more silvered than ever, and the rose stems look darker somehow, a deeper red. Winter comes early, this far north. With a well timed windstorm or an early snow, the leaves might be gone before Dean is.

There are swans on the sloughs, in places. Chattering flocks of dull-plumaged shorebirds wheeling like dry leaves.

Floss doesn’t come with them, this time — she’s due any day now, barrel-shaped, panting skeptically at even the mild Alberta end-of-summer heat. In just a few weeks, the Walking L will  be rounding up the cattle, deciding how many of the calves to winter and how many to sell.

Dean nudges Daphne into a jog, when they crest the ridge, and then they’re loping along the fenceline, wind catching her long tail. Dean bends low over her ears. He’s murmuring sweet nothings to her, Castiel knows; flights of ridiculous praise. His heart clenches briefly. Do horses notice, when their humans are gone?

Esmeralda’s ears prick, watching them, and she breaks for a few strides into her own jog. Then she seems to remember that she has the inept rider today, and subsides back into a walk.

They ride for hours. They ride aimlessly, but every time Castiel casts an assessing eye over Dean, studying his posture for signs of discomfort, he finds none.

“I have things for sleeping out,” says Dean, turning abruptly in his saddle when Castiel catches up with him after another bout of loping, skirting down the side of a little valley. He looks suddenly self-conscious. “I mean, if you want. Maybe we could dodge Hurricane Ellen.”

His eyes are over-bright. The color is high in his cheeks, and not just from the wind.

Dean asked his doctor to clear him for horseback riding. He might have also asked about — other things.

Castiel studies his face, and Dean flushes redder. “I want,” Castiel says.

He takes Dean apart slow, that night. Strips him down and sinks into him like they have all the time that there is; like there’s nothing in the world but the two of them, suspended here, between sepia grass and fading sky. The wind is loud, but Dean is louder, shaking beneath him, begging and fisting his hands in the blanket and screaming out Castiel’s name. The wind is cold, but Dean burns hotter, and Castiel bathes in the living fire of him. Drives him off the blanket altogether. Kneads the dust that spells _home_ into the smooth of his skin.

He wonders if it could become part of him, somehow. Draw him back like the birds come back, a magnetic grain.

They sleep naked and intertwined, still sticking together in places, not caring. Dean moves sleepily in Castiel’s arms, burrows toward his shoulder, before Castiel’s even managed to pull up the blankets. He draws them over both their ears, sheltering. He lays a heavy arm over Dean’s ribs, the way he’s been afraid to do for weeks now. The wind moans outside their small refuge, but inside it’s quiet, and warm. Dean sleeps like he hasn’t in all the time Castiel’s known him, like a child, like a river stone.

\---

Floss has her puppies on August 23rd, eight of them, black and white and brown and gold, with closed eyes and mewling little voices and eight pieces of Castiel’s heart. One is a runt, and sickly, and Cas and Dean sit together on the floor of Dean’s room around its nest of blankets and take turns feeding it Imodium-spiked formula from a bottle.

The first puppy opens its eyes on September 5th, the last on September 10th. They move the cattle down from their summer range on September 19th, and Castiel rides in the line again, watches Floss, ears pricked, already back to work.

On September 24th, Dean throws a tarp over the Impala, secures it carefully, pats her hood. On September 24th, he slides into the passenger seat of Cas’s Nissan, and glances back, once, as they pass through the gate. On September 24th, he fucks Cas hard on his bed and soft and slow on his floor, presses him against the wall of his shower, leaves fingerprint bruises on his wrist. _I’ve got you, sweetheart,_ he murmurs, and, _yeah, like that,_ and, _beautiful, God, you’re so fuckin’ gorgeous,_ and, _I’ll see you in a month, okay? Only a month._

On September 25th, Castiel hasn’t slept. He pours bleary coffee for both of them, forces his favorite travel mug on Dean. He drives him to the airport, and pays for a space in the parking garage to walk him inside. Outside the customs line, he stands with his hands in his pockets, not knowing what to do with them, and then pulls them out and grabs Dean’s shoulders and kisses him there, for all the world — or at least its early-morning jetsetters, its bored security agents, its disoriented redeye-departers — to see.

He watches through a plate-glass window between a Tim’s and a Starbucks as the plane lifts off from the runway. It rises too high, too fast. The sun flashes blinding off its wings; it tilts, beginning its sweeping turn to the south. It disappears from Castiel’s view.

He runs, then — dashes across the lanes of Departures traffic, up the parking garage stairwell, onto the roof. He can see the whole sky from here. He can see planes — one, two, half a dozen.

It’s too late. He doesn’t know which one is Dean’s.

He still watches for twenty more minutes before he finally returns to the floor with his car, gets into it, and drives home, alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week's Canadian country song is [September](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFvwqgjC7As), but also Freelance Whales' [Broken Horse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml1oJb-uswo), which is neither Canadian nor country but was excellent editing music for this chapter.


End file.
